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Afar down the isles of the misty past, 

Away in the silence of years, 
Were builders, who reared to the Living God 

A temple, with prayers and tears. 




NEW YORK: 
HEARTHSTONE PUBLISHING COMPANY. 



1886. 



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Entered acoording to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by 

MRS. ELDRIDGE J. SMITH, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congre.^s, at Washington. 



The LEBft.ARV 
OF Congress 



WASHINGTON 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 



Why do we not live as children of a loving Fa- 
ther ? Are we aliens, and have no Father ? 

Why do we continue as children of sorrowing 
man, instead of God, our Father ? 

W^hy is it that we live amid darkness and de- 
spair, and continue saying. We are the children of 
God? 

It is time that we soar away from our continu- 
ous theories, and acknowledge God to be our 
Father, Friend, and Brother. 

It is time that we take our Father's hand and 
consecrate ourselves to life, and not to the fraudu- 
lent fever of theory — *' the pestilence that walketh 

in darkness/' 

II. 

The fact of life proves our immortality, the 
Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man, 
and the grand ultimate is, to love mercy, do justly, 
and walk humbly with God. 



4 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS 

Ecstasy, fervent heat, and exhilaration are not 
Christianity. 

These leave man, in the summer hours of life, 
listless, and without knowledge of his great in- 
heritance. 

We must" be mindful of our ownership in Christ. 

And we must keep our inheritance before us ; by 
this we will feel the influx of light, and the 
struggles through which we have come will be 
forgotten in the knowledge that TRUTH is ours. 

And the desert of materiality will no more dis- 
tress us, nor the sirocco of doubt parch us with 
thirst. 

Let us, then, be of good cheer, knowing that our 
hands rest in the loving clasp of our Father. 

Then we will fear no man, for the purity of soul 
gives Life, Truth, and Love. 

We must cease wearing garments that give 
Truth the appearance of a living lie. 

III. 

Do we not hear, '' We are sinners," continually 
repeated ? 



EAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 5 

Do these self-same accusers commit any less sin ? 

Does the Father-God make mistakes, and leave 
them to be corrected by man ? 

Does God the Father make a law, and leave the 
so-called sinner to make it over and hand it back 
to Him, saying, ** This is your law revised '' ? 

No, this cannot be. 

Jesus proves this, and said, " What I do ye shall 
do also, and greater works shall ye do/' 

The flowers of blessings innumerable that He 
gave are not asleep by the shores of Galilee and 
Genesareth ; these are ours to-day, for He says, 
** I am the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.*' 

We know that Jesus blessed this glad earth, and 
** verily it shall be blessed." 

We know that He left everything new and 5^oung. 

And that all in His sight is as the sweet flowers 
of early spring. 

IV. 

Life is a golden harmony, but by adhering to 
darkness and despair we lose sight of our inher- 
itance. 



6 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Amid human discontent we forget our lives are 
to grow as the lilies—** Consider the lilies of the 
field, they toil not, neither do they spin ; yet Solo- 
mon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these." 

We are thus made to understand that man is 
made in the ** image and likeness" of God, his 
Father. 

Thus out of self-imposed darkness we arise in 
the likeness of Him who says, ** Come unto me all 
ye that are a- weary and heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest." 

We realize that this gives us all things. 



V. 

Let us crave no more the deceiving light of every 
torch of theory. Let us live in the kingdom of the 
Father, and be *' taught as are the angels." 

The ** All-pervading" life gives us this power. 

We are always dazzled by intellect, and uncon- 
sciously do honor thereto. 

Thus, amid the strides of ambition and intellect, 
the wise soul feels self-poised, and rests in serenity, 
while the good deeds of the Master Christ become 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 7 

as if they had not occurred even beside the shores 
of Galilee, much less to extend to these hungry 
mortals, to whom the crumbs falling from the 
Master's table are denied, saying, '' Christ's dem- 
onstrations were simply to show His power." 

The perfect life of our Master gives evidence of 
the power of Spirit over man-made theory. 

And by His own words we know, if we do but 
open our blind eyes, that the strength of Christ 
belongs no more to the past than to the present. 

It is now. *' Now is the accepted time,*' as 
much as it was in the ages ago, when the cry of the 
lepers rent the air, "Tame ! Tame ! unclean ! un- 
clean !" Jesus' heart instantly was touched, and 
the lepers were cleansed. 

Now is eternity ! 

The to-morrows and yesterdays are not ours, but 
the Now is. 

By looking on woes and misfortunes we weave 
them for ourselves ; thus we cling to sin, sickness, 
and death, finding no remedy except by the tortur- 
ing theories of men, that go to great lengths to 
prove that Jesus' practical life and teachings are 
of no avail to us. 

Let us spring to Light ; nothing can harm us. 



8 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

and the Everlasting Galilee of Life is ours now, 
the grand eternal Now of God. 

Theory and suppositions are like the sea, which 
bears its flower gardens on its upper waves. 

By and by its treacherous rocks are felt, and the 
fleeting flowers are gone. 

But Memory in the Everlasting Galilee of Life 
gives us constant joy, and we realize the meaning 
of, '* These signs shall follow them that believe." 

Upon our beings, mighty sea, let us tremble no 
longer, permitting self and ambition, with their 
paltry peace, to play upon our shores, defying our 
heart's yearning as the ** Still Small Voice" says, 
** It is I, be not afraid." 



VL 

Let us go forth and find love in God, ** for 
God made man in His own image.** 

Let us prove our unity in Him by being the 
gladdest of all in the Bosom of the Universe, and 
give our lives no longer to self, but leap to the 
knowledge of our inheritance, full of the Spirit 
that makes us free. 

Let us go onward as children of an honored 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 9 

Father, knowing that the blessings of fortune and 
liberty are ours of Him — fortune in Christ's Life, 
and Liberty in His demonstrated acts. 

Behold the grand life in the thousandfold love 
of all creation — the lion zealous for her young, 
the pelican baring her own breast, and nursing her 
young with her own heart's blood ; and will God 
do less to us ? 

Shall we be forgotten or destroyed of God ? 

Let us realize in our daily lives tlie beauty of our 
existence, and know this protection is ours of our 
Father. 

Let us remember no impression is lost, and our 
daily lives are made up of these. 

Let us bend our energies to have our lives ac- 
complish better things than ambition's flattery, the 
which, as soon as its acme is attained, leaves us 
wounded and bleeding by the roadside. 

We know theory cheats, but we know God will 
never desert us, nor drag us down to destruction. 



vn. 

We say soul sins ; the Bible says, '' The soul that 
sinneth, it shall die ;" now, does not this prove soul 



lO BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

to be God's entity, for the soul is God's image, and 
'' in Him we live and move and have our being." 
We could not do this if God had given us a sick 
and dying soul, for a sick and dying soul could 
not be God's image. 

Mortality and Immortality cannot mix any more 
than water and oiL 

We must gravitate toward God, as the earth 
does to the sun. 

We must come to the Father, who gives us of 
Himself. 

We must be transfigured from our theory-making 
selves, and know God's image is reflected in man. 

We must approach our inner life, and ask our- 
selves if we are applying Christ to cure our 
errors. 

Of what is all the world worth ? The joy and 
pleasure that may be found therein is like all the 
knowledge the moon has of this earth — ** her cold 
face sees it but by night." 

We must reason ; behold. He says, " Come now, 
and let us reason together." 

Remember, not one moment shall we admit God 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. II 

to be the author of sin, sickness, or death ; we thus 
lose all our conception of Him. 

We must live gladly, divinely by the Spirit of 
God — '* Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is 
perfect." 

VIII. 

As the days go by they admonish us to be like 
God, for the spirit calls us all the while. 

God and our Master Christ are one, and Christ 
is our Brother ; therefore God is not different nor 
distinct from us His children. He gives to us His 
Light, Life, and Tranquillity. 

Life's hopes blossom in God ; let us wait for 
them in His Light. 

By this all pain will go out of life, and perfection 
will take its place in the mosaic work of our exist- 
ence. 

Each act will have the care befitting it, each 
thought will be content to grow in the sunshine of 
the Life that comes of the Creator God, our 
Father, '* who giveth to all men liberally, and up- 
braideth not.'' 

The Life that is ours is of God, and this being 
so, we realize, "Be ye perfect, as your Father in 
heaven is perfect." 



12 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Is man only the creature of an hour ! One short 
hour of life ! Is man the actor in all this his own 
created misery, sorrow, starvation, bitter pangs 
and woes ! Is he only the creation of himself ! Is 
he to be content in that short-lived rapture that 
comes of intercourse with his fellow-man ! 

Could this be so, he never could find himself 
again in the inheritance of God. 

We must rally from our selfishness, and be linked 
in the Harmony of Life, and no longer dwell on the 
confines of a theory that cannot be demonstrated in 
the daily work of life. God makes our own by His 
own Life, and by the manifestations of the Life of 
Christ our Brother. 

We are dazzled as children. We permit ourselves 
to be robbed by a theory that is powerless to give us 
peace by which to live, and we cry out, '' O Lord, 
how long ?" 

We must arise and trample out blossoms and 
fruits of wrong thinking — a thinking that will not 
demonstrate itself in comfort nor quiet, as *' they 
that wait on the Lord shall mount with wings as 
eagles ; they shall run, and not be weary ; they 
shall walk, and not faint.'* 

Let us not become impatient because the acorn 
of thought does not grow to an oak at once. Let 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 1 3 

US Strive to bear in mind the flowering stalk and 
the full-grown ear, knowing their exquisite perfec- 
tion comes of the finishing gold — '' Be ye diligent 
in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 

** These things ought ye to do, and not leave the 
other undone." 

Man cannot be one without his Maker, nor will 
his Maker entangle him in snares and leave him 
helpless. 

A proper father takes care of his children, and is 
God not as good ? 



IX. 

We trernbled at the serpent of wrong in our 
pathway, which God our Father never made. 

We tremble doing right simply because we fear 
to do wrong. Let us strive to go forward and do 
right from principle, and thus realize we are at 
work in our *' Father's Vineyard.'' 

We are to remember Jesus broke no law of His 
Father in healing the sick and sending the mes- 
sage to us, '' The works that I do, ye shall do also.'' 

Remember, He says, *' I and my Father are 
One," 



14 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Remember, He says, ** All Mine are thine,'' 
** and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God ;" there- 
fore, soul, thought comes back, and is precious in 
the everlasting redeeming Motherhood of Christ, 
the gift of God. 

This God's best gift we do possess, without let or 
hindrance, and with fragrant joy, as incense 
breathing, we find Life and '* feed beside the still 
waters." 

By our brilliant theories we spoil the life the 
Master gives, and make our bread as bitter ashes. 

Let us go forth in the strength of Life, and scatter 
no longer toward heaven this self-thinking. Let 
us arise from the thousand times ten 'thousand 
theoretical decisions to the Giver, and drink the 
divine Spirit. 

Let us show forth Jesus* life, and no longer 
tremble on the brink of traditions that demonstrate 
not our loving Master. 

For Jesus is our Brother ; less than this He is not. 

And God is our Father ; less than this He is not. 

Thus, side by side, " all ye are brethren," made 
holy by the word of our Master. 

In this heart-penetrating thrill we comprehend. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 1 5 

'* He spake, and it was done ; stretch forth thine 
hand," and the hand was made whole as the other. 

By this comes the comprehension of *' Lazarus, 
come forth.'* 

And we realize in this what is intended in the 
expression, *' And the Lord buried him.'* 

Let us, then, take the Canaan of eternal living in 
Christ, who gives the conscious knowledge of our 
thrice-transfigured existence. 



X. 

By reasoning as He tells us we will arise from 
the circumstances around us, knowing they are the 
acts of the present hour, and not the everlasting 
creations of the All-pervading Life. 

Let us faithfully rescue every moment, and un- 
fetter our lives from spiritual poverty. Hath not 
God given us the delight of Himself, and are we, 
His children, not a joy to Him, and are we *' mak- 
ing melody in our hearts to the Lord '' ? 

And we are His children before the world was 
known, for Jesus, our Friend and Brother, says, 
*' Before Abraham was, I am." 

[ God's love for us is as the everlasting ages. 



l6 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Let US cease from wrath, however infinitesimal 
it may seem to us ; let us come no more into dis- 
pleasures, but arise ** to the mark of the prize, of 
the high calling of God in Christ Jesus/* 

Thus we will joyfully realize the Light of His 
demonstrated life, and gravitate toward the eternal 
Now of God. 

XL 

To acknowledge that God makes death robs 
Him of purity, and leaves the impression that God 
beholds iniquit)^, while we should have it ever 
present in our thoughts, '' God is too pure to be- 
hold iniquity." 

xn. 

The goods of life are never appreciated, and we 
go on amid despondency, wondering why we have 
not more all the time. But our great overweening 
vanity and wrong prevents our giving the genuine 
test of good in every act, and keeps us from living 
in rich divinest love, and feeling that our lives are 
of God. 

** For life is lived out of God,'' says the old Ger- 
man, Leopold Schafer. 

Let our lives be sunny and bright. Let us stride 
away from all that wrests from us the golden ker- 
nels of the enwreathed grain in the Sunlight of 
God. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 1 7 

Our faces must shine of the life that is ours in 
pleasing beauty full of joy, and our daily lives 
prove that good is ever strewn with light ; and the 
more we share our gifts with others the more glad- 
ness and peace will come to us. 

The pov^er to exercise Life's tender sympathy is 
ever a welcome guest, and amid our selfish discon- 
tent paves the way to the acknowledgment of a 
privilege to reverence acts of kindness done in 
times of distressing need. 

This privilege to dwell in reverence is our birth- 
right of the Father. 

This helps us share our lives with others, giving 
them a glad presence amid our bounty, knowing 
our lives are of God ; and this generous grace is 
reflected from man to man. 

Without this joy life would be dark amid its 
selfishness. 

Man in his wealth and power ofttimes forgets this 
essentia] of his being ; thinking not of others' 
wrongs and sufferings^ his life is lived of poverty 
apart from the image of God. 

Thus, out of his own discontent he lives and 
thinks that he has pleasure in his sense of taste, while 
he decorates his walls with art, of which his inner 
thoughts are ignorant, and covers his household 
in purple and fine linen. 

2 



l8 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

It is the purple and fine linen of the life in 
God that is needed, and we must strive to attain 
unto it. 

XIII. 

As the little child throws its toys away and lies 
down on the grass asleep, glad in innocent joy, so 
must we cast out pride and wrong-doing, springing 
to the Life that is ours through inheritance from 
God. 

Then will come joy and bliss, and " the beams 
out of the timbers shall answer it." This will 
bring the genuine Good, and " thy health shall 
spring forth speedily." 

For out of this comes the divine living, *' the 
only Life," and the image of God. 

No play of human thought, no living, is Life but 
this — the right of living to God. 

" Thy health shall spring forth speedily," know- 
ing no power can deprive us of these exalted pos- 
sessions ; and we take of this glorified joy to help 
those who fall among the thieves of sin, sickness, 
and death. 

XIV. 

Thus man, a perfect whole, and God his Maker, 
and Jesus the Healer, Friend, and Brother, needs 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 19 

no act of tender pity to his brother to prove His 
Godhead. 

XV. 

The deeds of ostentatious charity stir the stubble 
of thought ; then men are pleased, and think that 
God is in this whirlwind of selfishness ; but the 
** Still Small Voice'' stands by at eventide, saying 
to the Adam of self, *' Where art thou ?" 

Self, seeing only the whirlwind of its own crea- 
tion, sits disconsolate amid the fragrant air and 
balmy sunshine, hearing not the '* Still Small 
Voice," and continues striving to appease spirit- 
cravings with the chaff of its own oblivious unde- 
monstrated happiness. 

Thus self strides away amid its clarion of so- 
called charity, yet the *' Still Small Voice " comes 
at eventide, telling us '* Thou shalt have no other 
gods but me.'' 

And the flaming sword of accusation, quivering 
in the horizon, makes man cry out, ** I am more 
than the dust of annihilation.'* 

And the Day Star of Hope arises in the sun-joyed 
sky. He says, ** I will arise and go to my Father." 
Claim sorrow no more, but drink of the inexhaust- 
ible Fountain of Knowledge, God the Father, who 
says, *' Come and drink." 



20 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

*' Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
waters." 

'' Therefore shall ye draw waters out of the wells 
of salvation." "^ 

** Call upon His name, declare His doings among 
the people." 



'* For He saith, Are not my princes altogether 
kings?" 

XVI. 

We are sent onward in this present realm of 
being. 

We know no more than babes. 

For while we wait in the darkness of individual 
or self thought, striving to immerse spirituality 
into materiality — behold as we wait, the past, 
present, and future are absorbed by the eternal 
knowledge, *' Now," and theory is eclipsed by the 
true conception of ** Life, Truth, and Love." 

And He walks with us to the resurrection of our 
being into the Israel of God, the Emmaus walk of 
Christ with us His brothers. 

Then we realize the legions of evil go into the 
swine of theory, and are consumed in the waters 
of divine living. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 21 

Thus we come to the Light, and have the ex- 
planation of '* work out your own salvation with 
fear and trembling." 

For we tremble, knowing we have built our lives 
of human thought-material, evermore sunk into 
self and absorbed thereby. 

But the wedding-train of Immortal Life eclipses 
the funereal darkness of theory ; thus we have our 
lives '' hid with Christ in God.'' 

XVII. 

Man cannot rob God. And we know man can- 
not rob us of Eternal Life. 

Thus we stray no more, to be gone for years, to 
the enslavement of self. 

Straying from Life's Eden, to be buried in a 
theory of man's creation, that ruins the morning 
of all our days, and makes the eventide, midnight 
and misfortune. 

Straying from the House of God to the merit- 
less positions of man, in his envious theories sculpt- 
ured in sorrow, painted in pangs, by millions of 
mankind, waiting unfed in these unfruitful lands. 

Searching these barren fields, our feet grow 
weary in the burning stubble. 



22 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

But tenderly the Master of Life creates a new 
heaven and a new earth of our being, the sky of 
joy shines over us, making '' life worth the living." 

XVIII. 

Let us '* be diligent,'' and bear in mind that the 
ever-living God will aid us in whatever our hands 
find to do. 

And in this blessing, we serve the day of life in 
honest duty, finding our worth in being glad to 
distribute of God's bounty. 

And we realize what life is worth ! 

A new world forever hid with Christ in deeds 
of mercy, speeding all to happiness and blessings. 

XIX. 

By this we find the Living Thought is ours, and 
we get a foretaste — *' The half has never been 
told.'' 

All life is crowned with Godhead's noble worth, 
and man, a part of God by Christ, our Brother, 
gives to us the place with Himself in the Israel of 
God. 

When the lives we love go onward, and we feel 
without a friend, while the pale moon shines down 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 23 

as before, and the stars burn in the bright heavens, 
and earth, with thousands of children, goes gayly 
on as if to mock our woe, our hearts are bowed, 
and none can give comfort. 

Behold the Finger writing in the sand ! 

The sand falls to its place ! 

The sea flows by ! 

The Master of Life waits ! And man, no longer 
bowed by woe, goes calmly onward. 

But he goes in hope. 

Hope sprang to knowledge in Gethsemane ! 

And knovx^ledge to peace in the Everlasting Pen- 
tecost of life. 

But for this impervious well-spring of being that 
man is co-existent with God, our lives would be 
unbearable. 

The demonstrated love in the life acts of the 
Master gives us peace and fills us with a perfect 
knowledge, and we go hopefully onward. 

XX. 

It is humanity's inner life, the heaven of soul. 
If thought has beginning, it has its end, '' and 



24 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

the glaring flash is all there is, and we to dust and 
ashes turn." 

But as we see the fact of being daily, it makes it 
less possible that it is a flash only made stronger 
by the strength its forerunner gives. 

The Eternal joy is ours, or wherefore this long- 
ing for the Light ? 

Wherefore this thirst for purity ? 

Wherefore this star-eyed glory that shines back 
to our lives from the joy of childhood ? And the 
soul-light that comes to us in our children's up- 
turned faces ? 

Pure and sweet is the child-life and perfect is 
the soul won from self-thought ; and as the child- 
life unwittingly gazes on the beautiful, so do 
we brush aside the curtain which separates us from 
Life, Truth, and Love. 

Does all this convey nothing but ashes ? And 
has God given one swift moment and no more ? 

A world of beam ! 

A world of gloom ! 

A world of joy, to think, to feel, and all life's 
centre thrilled ! And then, to dust and ashes 
turn ? 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 25 

O God, wherefore all this amid one dazzling 
day ! 

Life rushing back upon itself ! 

Itself destroyed ! 

And beauty, blessing, all for naught ! '' Of His 
own will begat He us/' 

The Father hath to us His image given ! 

The Father ! 

The I AM ! 

And Jesus, our Brother, we were, and are ever 
with God the Living Light. 

In silence and wonder we stand and gaze, and we 
feel safe as the stars above us, in the hollow of 
God's hand. 

XXI. 

Theory gives to us the supposition that Nature 
lays her haijd irresistible on bud and blossom, and 
on man, the prize of all ! 

Behold the coming of springtime bloom I 

The circled earth ! 

The change of seasons one by one. And year by 



26 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

year, from childhood to the silver hue of time ! 
And all is turned to mould and dust ! 

Freedom and truth swept out of life ! 

Astonished at this giant stride, the heart goes to 
its own funeral. 

Remorse, with its sordid power, all the fond 
memories has turned to ashes ! 

But the Spirit of Life, in the fair eternal Now of 
God, gives back our heart's desire. 

Thus amid this Spirit wealth we turn to our lov- 
ing Father's heart and home. 

And love abides I 

And blessings in Life Immortal. And theory, 
with its dust and ashes, sorrows us no more. 

And we live. 

And the Gospel of Love and Mercy is preached, 
the deaf hear, and the weary find rest. Rest in 
]^s\is~jnanifest life. 

Thus out of sickness we are well ! 

Out of sorrow we come to Light, and we do not 
depend on miaterial for eternal joy. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 27 

We spring to health ! 

We rest no more on doctrines and command- 
ments of men, and realize God did not make sin 
to tempt us, sickness to punish us, and death to 
make all life a blight. 

XXII. 

Like produces like. 
We all know this. 

And we know God is Life. 

Can life produce death ? Behold, He says, 
** Why will ye die, O house of Israel ?'* 

And since we know God is ** Life, Truth, and 
Love,'' could He make death, when it also says, 
"" God is too pure to behold iniquity" ? 

Since Jesus our Saviour said, *' Thy sins be for- 
given thee," did God make sickness ? 

Could or would it be possible for Jesus to forgive 
Himself? 

Let us listen to the call, ** Come now, and let us 
reason together," and inspire our lives with the 
power of the Holy Spirit, that leads us to all 
Truth. 



28 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

By living so long in the thieving St. Giles of 
human thought our ideas are upside down. 



XXIII. 

Let us plead to ourselves of Truth as it is in our 
Master Christ. Let us ever realize God as the only- 
Author, and live outside of the scourge of theory. 

For the Ladder of Eternal Life unites man with 
his Maker,-** who made all that was made, and all 
He made w^as good." 

Thus the whirlwind of theory will return to its 
source — nothing — and man, with ** the Still Small 
Voice," stand by the Bethlehem of Life and the 
Calvary of the Great Resurrection from self, to 
the living Master, the Redeemer from theory or 
human plans, to the living in Life, Truth, and 
Love. 

Thus we will have the tranquil soul of heaven. 

Thus whatever we purpose doing will be done as 
if in God's sight. 

For whatever we may do is a part of memory to 
all lifetime, and the love of God will give to us His 
indwelling Spirit. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 29 

XXIV. 

Our daily lives should be a long reflection of 
good deeds done in pure good-will. And being 
done in love, we ask of man no thanks ; thus we 
possess the *' Only Riches." 

By having patience ourselves we command it in 
others, and hope and love come trooping in ten 
thousand times ten thousand. 

And in this practice of all that is good we get 
the Father's image all the while. 

We must therefore leave theory, and have the 
Spirit conception. 

And when we see not the Spirit conception, we 
are apt to say our daily labor hinders our living 
Godward. 

Are we not aware Jesus labored, and thus all our 
lives are blessed in it ? 

We wander in the fields and behold the birds all 
about us full of song and praise, but do they not 
go down to the hay and stubble for food, and are 
they not the same ? 

And are they not getting their living ? And in" 
this labor the bird does not lose its identity. 



30 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

And the clinging vines teach us as well to go 
onward in a glad gratitude to do whatsoever our 
hands may find. 

And the Eternal Giver makes our lives natural in 
the recognition of His gift of Eternal Life. 

By thus reasoning we go gladly onward. 

We cannot be forsaken of God. We breathe His 
breath as '* He breathed on them the Holy Ghost f' 
this Christ gave to us, His brothers of right of 
birth, ** and He breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life/' 

** Behold all ye are brethren." ''And ye are 
Christ's, and Christ is God." 



XXV. 

More and more we see the healing of Jesus is 
ours to-day, or it was not by Bethlehem's hills nor 
Galilee's shore. 

This gives to us treasures inexhaustible. ' 

It numbers our hairs, and keeps us in the hollow 
of God's hand. 

It gives us health, youth, and springtime bloom. 

It blows from us the cloak that theory gave. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 31 

It unclasps the dross of greed. 

It gives us the pristine strength of the baptism 
of birth. 

Life prospers in its path, and sincerity is in its 
speech, for from the heart's ** abundance the 
mouth speaketh." 

We do know what we have seen, and do testify 
what we feel in our own lives every hour. 

XXVI. 

All things are taught to us of a past that God 
has blest, and we are left to a blind leading the 
blind present, that no God-power does bless ; and 
thus we linger in sorrow made by ourselves and 
sickness to which we cling, because no angel comes 
to stir the stagnant waters of our lives. 

When life is open as a fountain, the birds drink 
at will, and why not the priest, teacher, friend, 
kinsman, and fair humanity combined ? 

XXVII. 

We arose from years of illness, weakness, sor- 
row, and trouble by turning our lives to the " Real 
Living." 

Many times we have been months confined to 
our bed. Many times have we supposed we had 



32 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

not long to stay in this life. Many times we have 
sorrowed over the passing out from the body of 
friends, tender loved ones, and of our heart's life, 
our own children, *' and would not be comforted.** 

We all know words are poor consolation for 
wounded hearts. 

Yet if you will notice, this is all poor humanity 
can give. 

And why ? 

Truly this is all it has of its poverty-stricken 
store, and can we blame any ? 

Have we not often been told, " Is there no balm 
in Gilead ?" and the telling is all we can find out. 

Thus we go on as before in our suffering state, 
seeking rest in the deluge of theo/y, finding no- 
Ararat of mercy nor olive of peace. 

And why ? 

Let us think a moment. 

By what power do we live ? 

By what title do we speak of time as we measure 
each moment ? 

Do we ever think a moment is the measure of 
our day ? And do we feel these to be precious, and 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. ^^ 

that not one atom of what we are pleased to call 
time can we create ? Yet we speak with authority 
of weeks, days, months, and years. 

Do we ever think of their Author, and know He 
is ours as well ? 

**Come,'' says the Father, " and let us reason 
together.*' 

The Father says, *' Come now." 

Come — now ; behold, in this relation w^e are 
standing in the Light. 

Could we reason with light and be in darkness 
when we address Light, the living God ? 

When we say, *' Father, take my hand,'' He takes 
it, we go forth and demonstrate it in our daily 
lives, and if we are not better in bodily health and 
soul-life we have not asked of God, but our sup- 
positional theory, and lords many, and gods many. 

Sometimes we wonder any thought is attained, 
for man is left to suppose God's power only takes 
away sin, and that some other power is to take 
away sickness, its counterpart. 

We adhere so to our human thinking that we 
find no meaning in the Scriptures as we read, **X 
am the God that healeth thee." 



34 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

We are taught soul is immortal, and this immor- 
tality represents the Creator of all ; thus we feel we 
are made in the image of spirit, and Christ showing 
this spirit power, expressed the tenderness of 
motherhood as He wept over the Jerusalem of 
misfortunes and the Lazarus of distress. 

And we the children of God should dwell in the 
acknowledgment of soul-power, and not give 
vent to paltry faith, — obscured joy, laggard hope, 
and meagre soul-research, ever standing alone, 
amid the catacombs of memory awaiting a voice 
to call us, when that voice is ours in the immortal- 
ity of Life. 

Man being God's child is hence like his Father, 
and the great principle in Christ. 

Jesus, our God-man, supplements every human 
thought by His apparent physical suffering, and 
by His raising the sick proves Himself to be sup- 
plemented of God, and by His raising the dead 
proves Himself to be supplemented of Power, Prin- 
ciple, Life. 

And by His raising His own body proves His 
supplementing life and immortality instead of 
human thinking and man-made doctrines ; thus 
man being His brother, and God our Father, and 
*' I and My Father are one," gives to man his in- 
heritance of Eternal Life. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 35 

He says, '* Come now and let us reason to- 
gether," friend to friend ; by this we realize we are 
as He sees us, pure and holy ; in this way people 
feel the warmth of health return, and arise and 
walk, for all *' Mine are thine, and all thine are 
Mine, and all ye are brethren." 

If for one moment we could feel God sees us as 
He made us, we would feel the freedom of the free. 

We must recognize our right to Life, Truth, and 
Love, and build up our barren lives thus, and see 
as Job, '' Yea, in my flesh shall I see God, and 
mine eyes shall behold, and not another." 

xxvin. 

" Be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee," 
says the Master. Does this not show plainly that 
sickness, being sin, is not of God ? 

Jesus would walk here to-day but for our deter- 
mining sin, sickness, and death to be a reality sent 
from God to punish us for wrongdoing. He says, 
** Arise and walk ;" let us take Him at His word, 
and walk toward Him, for lo ! He tells us, "I am 
of thy brethren the prophets.*' 

Let us leave theoretical decisions behind us, and 
realize that He is breathing on us the principles we 
destroy in our blindness. 

Let us awaken from our weakness in self, and 



36 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

know He is ** the substance of things hoped for/' 
and by this will come to our lives the comfort of 
what Jesus means in the expression, '' Before 
Abraham was I am." 

This gives us our oneness with Christ, and the 
healing Mother Principle of Jesus makes God our 
Father. 

We go on thinking of none of these things, but 
delve into all manner of ambitious desires, which 
deprive life of its early freshness, and bring to the 
eventide all manner of misfortunes. 

Have we not this shown to us by the lives of our 
public men, gladly honored amid popularity, and 
soon forgotten when the sun of earthly greatness 
has set, and the bubble of grandeur gone out into 
poverty and disgrace ? 

But the flesh-pots of Egyptian darkness are 
hunted for b}'- all, '* And my people do not con- 
sider ;*' therefore we seek to hear of sickness and 
distress. 

Can we not strive to be as living souls, and not 
machines that grind out thankless, aimless lives ? 

Can we not give some evidence of the fruits of 
the Spirit ? This we must do, or we are not a fruit- 
bearing fig-tree. 



( 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 37 

XXIX. 

Let us cut down our many theories and arise to 
the ** good part that shall not be taken away from 
us,*' the children of the most high God. 

Yet our daily acknowledgment is, that we are the 
children of mortals, with an inheritance only of sin, 
sickness, and death. 

We talk of '' that Great Day " in which we shall 
give accounts of our thoughts, words, and actions. 

We find the measure of that Great Day each 
hour, and we can fill it to none other than our Mas- 
ter's service, for God looketh on the children of 
men, ''and He is too pure to behold iniquity." 
Hence only acts of purity and love can we offer to 
our Father. 

And if we would look to God we ** would be 
healed of all infirmities." 

You may be ready to say. Tell us how ? 

Hearken ! *' None are so deaf as those who will 
not hear." 

Look from the ordinary human standpoint to 
Jesus, our Friend and Brother. Can any sin or 
sickness be found in Him ? 

Now, in thus reasoning our lives to our Master 
we realize, ** I am the God that healeth thee.'' 



38 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

This is what the man did when Jesus said, 
** Stretch forth thine hand." 

This is what the man did at the ** beautiful gate 
of the temple/' when Peter said, *' Silver and gold 
have I none, but such as I have, give I thee/' 

The Light of Christ is seen by turning to Him, 
and we can do this as well as the lilies of the field 
that He tells us to consider. 

** Not by might, not by power^ but by My 
Spirit/* 

Now, if all these things could have been done to 
show His power only, what is left to us ? 

Let us go forward and bring forth the fruits of 
the Spirit, and we will realize that the life of Jesus 
in His great resurrective principles of Truth, Love, 
Mercy, and Perfection are ours to-day as well as 
when His hearers heard Him say, ** These signs 
shall follow them that believe." 

Let us go forward with our lives attuned to Love 
and Mercy, and we will realize, '* Fear not, I am 
with you. Be not dismayed ; I am thy God ; I 
will strengthen thee." 

He says come — now, not to-morrow, thus con- 
veying to our lives an ever-present now ; and this 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 39 

He gave to us naturally by His love and tender- 
ness. 

So we have freely the life immortal of Christ, 
our Brother, who walked the wave, who said, 
*' Suffer little children to come unto Me;'' and 
every moment proves to us that He represents His 
grand harmonious life. 

Let us cease binding our poor lives with the cor- 
don of the world, in fear of every expression of 
man. 

Let us sing the song of Life, and in our cradle- 
hours and our noon-day go forth full of joy and 
sing as the morning stars sang together. 

*' And the Spirit and the bride say, Come." 

** And let him that heareth say, Come." 

** And whosoever will, let him take the water of 
life freely." 

XXX. 

Life never was made to suffer ; human theory 
does that plentifully. 

We must work to rid ourselves of our precon- 
ceived ideas, and strive to know what is the mean- 
ing of *' Truth, Love, and Mercy." 



40 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

" God is no respecter of persons." 

Behold, He sends Love to us, to show us of Him- 
self, yet we see it not. 

We want to realize these things, and in this 
" blessing" misfortunes dissolve by His Spirit. 

And the clouds move away, giving us deeds of 
love in the place of human thought-material. 

Amid the blinding wilderness of sin and misfort- 
unes, in the midnight of heredity's gross errors we 
grope all our lives. 

Yet we blame none. We wonder that we are 
able to go on even in this way. For we are sup- 
posed to be afraid of God, and only living what 
men call proper lives from fear of the world, and 
not from the Life-giving love of good. 

XXXL 

Men insisting upon finding employment gener- 
all}" succeed. 

We hunt every doctor's book and family tradi- 
tions for names of ailments, and we get them. We 
tramp away down to our forefathers in a sort of 
pride, and claim a right of birth in all their dis- 
eases. We are rewarded abundantly. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 41 

We see our loved ones passing away with con- 
sumption in its almost worse than leprosy stages, 
amid its minutiae of sorrow, and say these are the 
gift of Providence, and, being so, we have to un- 
murmuringly succumb. 

And we see the horrifying results of these on 
every hand when Jesus, our Life, called sickness 
sin, when He said, '' Thy sins be forgiven thee," 
and God our Father calls, saying, ** I am the God 
that healeth thee." 

Yet we ever are ready to say, Doctor So-and-so 
cured me last time, and I am going to him again. 

And Doctor So-and-so is visited, and his remedies 
do not hit, and the poor targeted sufferer goes on- 
ward with the thorn in the flesh and the sick body, 
the body of death, ever his companion. 

There is no need of this, or Jesus came in vain. 

Yet you will say, " God made me to suffer, and I 
cannot get rid of it/' If you were going across a 
field and a furious animal should start after you, 
would you try to run ? 

Or would you, in your suppositional obedience, 
stand still, saying, *' God placed this animal here to 
punish me, and I must submit'* r 

Do you think you would have a moment's 
parley ? 



42 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Are not the wild beasts of sin, sickness, and 
death left to run riot in our midst, and no hand to 
pity and no arm to save ? 

Would a good father take a child and tell him to 
cross a field, knowing there was danger every step 
of the way ? 

If our common fatherhood and motherhood-love 
would not do this, how dare we thus accuse God ? 

How could the Great Creator give to us these 
things, since none of these attributes — sin, sor- 
row, darkness, and misery— are to be found in Him 
*' with whom there is no variableness, nor shadow 
of turning" ? 

xxxn. 

We are the children of the Immortal God, or we 
are the children of nothing. 

Immortality has no semblance of wrong ! Mor- 
tality and the word lost, and the sorrows of life, be- 
long only to our actions in the ever-recurring hour. 

Could Immortality be lost, then God, the Author 
thereof, could be lost also. 

We are to work out our own salvation from 
human stubbornness, that condemns what its daily 
life is ever committing. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 43 

What is the use of a profession that is only 
applied in theory ? 

Of what use is it when our lives are not even 
formed by its model ? 

We have to reason our lives back to our Father, 
whose arms are Love, whose Life is ours, whose 
Love is ours ; and He gives us of His presence, 
*' Lo ! I am with you alway." 

Thus Christ, our Friend and Brother, walks with 
us ever. 

xxxin. 

God, our Father, begat us of His own will, and 
as He never can be lost, we cannot be. '* Speak to 
the children of Israel, that they go forward/' 

Let us go forward, and leap to the Fountain of 
Living Waters. 

He says, ** Come and drink, and be full of the 
Spirit, and do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly 
with God.'' 

We are the whisperings of God's Spirit, ** made 
in His image." 

Let us cling no longer to what history or tradi- 
tion calls the Adamic living, but let us claim our 



44 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

birthright in the demonstrated life of our Master 
Christ. 

Let us make rapid progress toward the Abra- 
hamic purity in Christ, that sets us free from the 
slavery of sin, sickness, and the woes of death. 



XXXIV. 

By adhering to dead forms in our great perversity 
we see not the words of our Master, ** Be ye perfect, 
as your Father in heaven is perfect." 

We must cease blotting out from our lives the 
transfiguration of Christ. 

We should know our daily lives are to be made 
up of the purity of our Master. 

Wherefore keep saying, I am saved by the blood 
of the Lamb and the Cross of Christ, stained with 
His precious blood. 

Of what avail are all these sayings when our lives 
do not demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit — love, 
joy, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 
meekness, temperance ; against such there is no 
law. 

** Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, 
saith the Lord of hosts.'* 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 45 

*' But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to 
every man, to profit withal/' 

** Now, there are diversities of gifts, but the same 
Spirit/' 

" And the disciples were filled with the Holy 
Ghost/' 

** And when He had called unto Him His dis- 
ciples, He gave to them power against unclean 
spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of 
diseases/' 

XXXV. 

" Ask Me of things to come concerning my sons, 
and concerning the work of My hands command 
ye Me/' 

** Yet now be strong, ye people of the land. Yet 
now be strong, and be strong, all ye people of the 
land, saith the Lord, and work ; for I am with you, 
saith the Lord of hosts/' 

'' The glory of this latter house shall be greater 
than the former, and in this place will I give peace, 
saith the Lord of hosts/' 

** I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirits 
to pass out of the land/' 

** They were troubled because there was no shep- 
herd/' 



46 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

*' I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire 
round about, and will be the glory in the midst of 
her. And ye shall be a blessing ; fear not, but let 
your hands be strong/' 

** I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies." 

** Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that 
send forth thither the ox and the ass." 

*' For then will I turn to the people a pure 
language, that they may all call on the name of the 
Lord, to serve Him with one consent.'* 

** He hath shown thee, O man, what is good ; 
and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to dp 
justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God.'' 

'* Seek ye Me, and ye shall live." 

*' Fear not, O land ; be glad and rejoice : for the 
Lord Himself will do greater things." 

** I will ransom thee from the power of the 
grave." 

** I will redeem thee from death.'* 

*• O death, I will be thy plagues ; I will be thy 
destruction." 

*' I have called thee by thy name." 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 47 

*' Thou art mine, I have redeemed thee." 

'* Before me there was no God formed, neither 
shall there be any after me. I^ even I, am the Lord, 
and beside me there is no saviour. Remember ye 
not the former things, neither consider the things 
of old.'* 

** I will ever make a way in the wilderness, and 
rivers in the desert/' 

** I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy trans- 
gressions for Mine own sake, and will not remem- 
ber thy sins.'* 

** For I will pour water on him that is thirsty." 

" I am the first, and beside me there is no God.*' 

** Even I will carry and deliver you." 

*'Can a woman forget her suckling child, that 
she should not have mercy on the son of her womb ? 
Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." 

*' Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people." 

*' O Lord, by these things men live, and in these 
things is the life of my spirit." 

** Keep silence, keep silence, O islands; and let 
the people renew their strength/' 



48 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

In all these expressions are Life and living God- 
ward told as plainly as is the every-day work of 
our lives. 

But we attend more to visible observances of 
man than to the life-saving spiritual joy that is 
ours of the inheritance of God our Father, and 
therefore, when we feel out of health, we at once 
seek man and theory, still claiming life, when these 
only ** make burdens that they themselves cannot 
lift with one of their fingers." 



XXXVI. 

We are ever telling our beliefs. 

Do we ever think of the real meaning of the word 
that so swiftly falls from our lips ? 

To be constantly saying, '' I believe ! I believe !" 
does not place us one whit nearer the accomplish- 
ment of life's work. It is the knowledge of God 
our Father that we must have, and not a blind be- 
lief that demonstrates nothing. 

** Seek ye Me, and ye shall live/' 

Let us hasten to this, and we will have our feet 
on the rungs of the ladder of divine living ; then 
the manifestations of the Spirit will be ours. 

How ? 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 49 

*' Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, 
saith the Lord of hosts/' 

The first thing to be done is to ask ourselves the 
question, Who am I ? And to clear up the house 
of our existence. 

This IS no idle task. It will take time and pa- 
tience, and at once comes in the benefit of the 
* * fruits of the Spirit/ ' We will have much opposi- 
tion, but we must be diligent and show forth fer- 
vent lifework in the vineyard. It makes no differ- 
ence to the Vineyard Keeper at what time we 
commence, we shall all be equal. He says, '' Shall 
I not do what I will with Mine own ?" 



XXXVII. 

We want to realize our oneness with God. 

Let us for a moment set all theoretical decisions 
aside. 

Suppose you had a task of clearing sand from a 
large dwelling, would you not at once begin at the 
cellar, and would not the sand run from the upper 
part all the time until the last shovelful was 
thrown out ? 

Thus we must continue throwing out the lees 
of sin, sickness, and death until we awake in His 
4 



50 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

likeness ; and this we can do by Christ's own 
word. 

Now, notice we are invited to the peace that 
comes of communion — *' Come now, and let us rea- 
son together.'* 

** Ask of Me things to come concerning My sons, 
and concerning the works of My hands command 
ye Me/' 

Now, suppose I simply ask the question, Who 
am I ? 

Can you answer ? 

If life extends no further to the life of God than 
the womb, then we are but dust and ashes of 
mortal man and mortal thought. 

Whence came we ? 

We do not know. 

And only from a material standpoint can we 
answer. 

Could any method of what we call science make 
/he human body ? 

No ; not even with all possible research could it 
make one hair of our head. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. * 5 1 

If we reason from a material basis we are lost in 
the marshes of theory and blindly go onward, say- 
ing we are the children of God, when we in nowise 
ever prove it. 

What then ? *' Stretch forth thine hand." 

Who does that, we or the God-Life ? Can you 
answer ? 

Since we know that it is not human power, it 
must be the God-Life ; thus our evanescent 
theories have to take wungs, and we awake to the 
Sunlight of acknowledged Immortality. 

Our daily lives are full of thankful joy as we 
realize there is a God and Father, and we His chil- 
dren acknowledged by His manifested life. 

That there is a Creator who proves His Immor- 
tality and ours by demonstration, and gives to us 
this power in the daily act ; thus we are supple- 
mented of Him in so doing. 

We thus loosen the clasp of theory, and know the 
manifested life of Christ absorbs the Adamic 
principle and sets us free. Then we comprehend 
the words, ** The glory of the latter house shall be 
greater than the former, and in this place I will 
give rest." 

And we state God is a God of love and mercy 



52 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

and vengeance, and repenteth Him of the evil, 
when we read, " I am not man that I should lie, 
neither am I the son of man, that I should repent.** 
And we further state that Jesus' acts of mercy- 
were for those times only. 

Could this be so, what is left us but a supposition 
of life ! 

Can we take the tongue of truth to utter things 
impure ? 

** Therewith bless we God, and therewith curse 
we men ; these things ought not so to be." 

Now, we repeat, what have we left us ? 

Behold a suffering body ! 

And no Christ principle to heal it. Behold our 
sorrow amid human thinking, and no mercy of im- 
mortality to supplement it. 

Thus is it amazing that we cherish sickness as a 
friend. 

Is it astonishing that we fear sin and yet clasp it 
in our every act and thought ? 

Is it any wonder that we feel the sting and have 
a horror of death, and are groping all our lives in 
the midnight of sorrow ? 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 53 

XXXVIII. 

Just as long as we seek life through death shall 
we grope amid the Adamic principles of fear, and 
the Noahic or Cheopian principle of the deluge of 
sorrow, running from the Eden of life in our mate- 
rial thinking* 

We permit no mount of resurrection to shine 
down on the plains of theory, and '' give rest in this 
place." 

Some will be ready to say, '* Of what use is all 
this*? We are not able nor ready to cope with it/' 
You will repeat to us, '* All this blessing is only 
ours after we die." 

** And that is what it can only mean, we die to go 
to heaven/' May we ask at once, in reply, does it 
not say, '' The kingdom of heaven is within you" ? 
And the fruits of the Spirit are shown forth in the 
presence of heaven in the daily life. 

But we wander on in our stiff-necked ways, and 
turn not to the Zoar of Peace, but cling to self, 
and stand a picture of life, encrusted with death. 

And can life and death inhabit the same condi- 
tions ? 

And can truth, love, mercy, vengeance, sin, sick- 
ness, death, and hell come of one source ? 



54 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Can these come of God — ** God, who made all 
that was made, and all He made was good "? 

What a condemnation comes to our lives by this 
thinking ! 

Behold, our friends fall into disgrace, we crush 
out what little lives they have left. 

Our loved ones leave us for the grave, and our 
lives are made full of sorrows because of these 
errors. 

We must go forth and recognize the power that 
came to the man with the withered hand. 

Standing before our Master, we must strive to 
realize this power that Christ, our Brother, gives 
to us, and thus our depraved decisions will depart. 



XXXIX. 

Behold our barren lives ! ** Teaching for doc- 
trine the commandments of men." 

*' God said, Let there be light.'* 

Let there be Light over this body of darkness. 
Breathe the inheritance that is ours and was ours 
before the Abrahamic hour. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 55 

** Before Abraham was, I am," and ye are 
Christ's, and the Christ principle and the Christ 
manifest is God. 

*' Wherefore bow your head like a bulrush ?*' 

'* Seek ye Me, and ye shall live." 

Drive off the Egypt of self, and the Spirit of Life 
will touch the waters of our lives, and " there shall 
be light." Thus theory gives place to Light, 
** and that which is perfect is come ;" thus we 
realize the tender Motherhood of Christ and the 
Fatherhood of God in the Love that is ours, in the 
entity of being, in the manifested principle, in 
Christ, our Brother. 

Assertions are not proofs. 

We must go on to the work of our being. 

Our conceptions must be " Life, Truth, and 
Love.'' 

Daylight represents Christ, God. 

The night pictures our ov/n self-thinking in our 
theoretical lives. 

We must grow to the realization that our Father 
sees us as He made us ; here we can see what is 



56 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

meant where it says, ** Immediately he received 
his sight/' 

Thus we can heal our own lives and aid others 
to the knowledge, for as God only sees us pure, 
we learn of the manifest Christ in the pure and 
holy God. 

This we should take in our lives as we do our 
daily bread. 

But we make assertions that we do not compre- 
hend. 

Saying it is warm at the Equator does not make 
it so. 

Saying all men are born free and equal does not 
make them so. 

Never was there a more illy-used word than 
equality, for circumstances do make mankind very 
unequal. 

We write voluminously on these subjects by 
assertion. 

We rarely think of the unequal lives of mankind. 

We see ourselves, and take for granted that the 
person who has less does not care for more ; and 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 57 

seeing people very poor, think that a little occa- 
sional charity is all they need. 

So you see we carry our overshadowing selfish 
decisions in their despotic character to the needs 
of all living, thus severing life from demonstrating 
the fruits of the Spirit. 

To demonstrate our ability to keep our faces to 
the principles of Christ and heal ourselves proves 
we are taking many steps toward God the Father. 

And we find life so blest in the comprehension 
of the little we have, we thirst for more. And more 
is added, for the man who had five -talents was in- 
creased, also one who had ten ; but the man with 
one talent went and hid his in fear. 

To keep our lives toward God proves we hear 
the Master saying, *' I am the God that healeth 
thee," and ** The works that I do ye shall do also, 
and GREATER works shall ye do.'' 

This will give to us joy and courage in a grate- 
ful, peaceful life. 

Let us persevere ; our Father is at the helm, 
and joy will come. 

*' He that endures to the end, the same shall be 
saved." 



58 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Saved from what ? 

A material living. 

This salvation keeps us in health, and we see our 
lives demonstrating the great principles Christ's 
life explains. 

XL. 

The principle of the orthodoxy of God is, Right 
Thinking. 

The principles of the doctrines of human think- 
ing is a whirlpool of misery and mystery by which 
to save a soul. 

When but one moment spent in *' Right Think- 
ing " would close the seven vials of wrath and man 
know himself to be " a living soul.*' 

Mere assertions are vain, but pure love gives 
life, and we are free with Christ in God. 

Now we lock up all good in tiny earthly Jerusa- 
lem, inviting all the world to come to the shrine of 
self and worship. 

We bring scorn and suffering with this dark 
material — thought, and feel self-satisfied, saying, 
** Lord, I thank Thee I am not as this publican, 
this unbeliever, who knows not the creed of man.'* 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 59 

Let us cease talking of the intentions of the 
Creator, and get rid of the whited sepulchres full 
of dead men's bones, whose sickening odors make 
life a burden. 

Let us cease cropping out in theory of the vari- 
ous plans of our Creator. 

Remember, he who sits and makes plans and then 
retracts is not Immortal. 

Behold how we do accuse God our Father ! We 
thus make God appear helpless, and to get back to 
any feasible shape He had to do the best He could. 

We thus make plentiful arguments by which God 
is to work to save us. His children. 

Demonstration is what proves a principle. The 
entire creation is perfection, and a perfect God the 
Creator. And this perfect Creator is our Father ; 
and that any circumstance of ours could hinder 
God is attributing to Perfection great imperfection. 

That God intended having man pure, then to say 
He could not have man so, places God's acts on the 
plane with ours. 

God calls us to reason, and we must know what 
Life is from the Demonstrator, and not from our 
perishing positions of thought. 

Let us take Life for our Friend instead of the 
ceaseless thought of death. 



6o BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Let US realize we are God's representatives, and 
that we are in concert with Him, and feel what 
Jesus says to be true, *' Lo, I am with you alway/' 

XLI. 

We say to ourselves, How shall I prove this ? 

The first point is to argue in our daily work, 
What is Life to us ? 

Is God Life to us ? 

Prove it. 

Is God Love to us ? 

Prove it. 

Is God Truth to us ? 

Prove it. 

Now, at this point comes, " Work out your own 
salvation with fear and trembling." 

It says '' your own salvation," remember. 

The beam has to come out of our own eye, and 
then we can see clearly to help our brother ; for the 
fruits of the Spirit in our own lives tells us what 
has become of our own traditions. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 6l 

'' And He said unto them, Full well ye reject the 
commandment of God, that ye may keep your own 
tradition." 

Whether God is '* Life, Truth, and Love " to us 
we can tell by the fruits of the Spirit ; and if these 
are ours we can comprehend, '* what I do, ye shall 
do also/' 

And to produce the fruits of the Spirit is the 
raising our lives to the Life of joy, to feel, " O God, 
I thank Thee." 

It is poor comfort to a sick person to say, '* Bring 
forth the fruits of the Spirit, and you will be well." 

The poor sufferer knows not of the life of Christ. 

And we must remember our human thinking 
makes us appear a possible position of life en- 
crusted with death. 

The sorrowing one will say, *' For you to tell me 
God is Life, Truth, and Love ; then does all this 
misery come of Him ?" 

Now we will tell you right here that we were at 
one time in this hour of anguish, and we went with 
quickening steps to one whom we thought a man 
of God ; he said, " Child, have you partaken of the 
Lord's Supper ?" 



62 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

*' Oh, yes/' we replied. 

** Well, are you not comforted T' 

** Comforted ! We are almost distracted to find 
some alleviation for our exceeding distress." 

*' Well," said the pastor, *' if you can find no 
peace in the rites of religion, we have none other 
to offer.'' 

We went away in a state that no language can 
describe. We passed through a beautiful church, 
and as we did so we seemed to realize, ** My God, 
my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" 

In our great torture we went onward. We 
thought there was no rest for us ; we were as the 
weary dove, no rest for the soles of our feet, and 
the deluge of man-made opinions hid from us the 
Olive-branch, Life. 

In our exceeding distress we sought an aged man 
of God, one who had been many years in his Mas- 
ter's Vineyard, and who had long ago come to the 
** Life, Truth, and Love" of the Gospel of our 
Maker. 

And soon we told our condition in as few words 
as the heart, bowed by its own misery, could 
ultcr. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 63 

The noble representative of God sat down beside 
us, saying, '* Child, you are not to blame." He 
did not tell us the old story, to be patient. 

No ; he had seen too many sufferers to tell them 
to be patient in a sorrow they could not combat. 

He did none of these things. 

But he said, '* Seek God, the Life, yourself, dear 
child." 

He poured into our lives the oil and wine of the 
Immortal Life ; God is Life, we His children, and 
the Father of Life gives not to us our sorrow. 

We make it in our blindness, and in the terror of 
our lives no angel is near to place our feet in the 
pool of Living Waters, because our blind theories 
make a wall around us, and we will not look be- 
yond, fearing that the customs of man may not 
approve. 

Yet we hear people say, ** All that is utter folly ; 
all of which you speak as being true was only 
done to show Jesus power as God.*' We went 
home to our best beloved, and the prayer of Life, 
Truth, and Love that the aged man of God pointed 
to us went before us a pillar of fire by night and 
a shower of peace by day. And all our material 
misfortunes of illness and the shortcomings of 



64 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

life were lifted, and the veil of the temple of 
theory was rent in twain ; and peace, comfort, 
and mercy came to our lives ; and now we continue 
striving to polish the talents God has given us, and 
more comes every hour. 

We relate this simple incident to help yours and 
our own lives all the time, for from our great ma- 
terial acceptance of life we are apt to let time wear 
away the mercies that come to our lives in trials. 



XLII. 

Let us strive to remove selfishness from our 
path, and show a perfect life in kindly deeds and 
such like acts — makingour judgment of our fellow- 
creatures pure and not look of crime. 

Redemption means release from bondage, and 
Christ points to us the way. 

And as God's breath is ours, we have this power. 

Thus we realize God only sees us pure, and we 
are redeemed from theoretically deciding on 

What is Life ? 

What is Truth ? 

What is Love ? 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 65 

Thus reasoning we have the release from sense, 
and come to the comprehension of every inclina- 
tion of soul, with its modes, its opportunities and 
undiscovered abilities vested in the Power that 
never mocks nor trifles with us. 

I Thus the wonderful characteristics of Immortal- 
ity absorb at once all insignia of sense, and Life 
shows forth its true Eternal Light in soul purpose 
and power. 

And we come to the realization of our oneness 
with the Wisdom Spirit, the Triune Principle of 
Life which was and is. Thus with Love replete we 
feel the Master's words, and catch His tones in the 
music of His tenderness, as He said, "" Our Father 
w^ho art in heaven." 

And He says, ' ' Ask and ye shall receive. ' ' 

Ask what ? 

Anything. 

And we should ask, and know He heareth us by 
the witness of the Spirit that He hath given us. 

It is in the absence of the Spirit that we grow 
weak, for " They that wait on the Lord shall run, 
and not be weary; they shall mount up with wings 
as eagles ; they shall walk, and not faint." 



66 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

We seek not the Spirit, therefore we suffer and 
pass out of the sight of man, and the place of 
theory knows us no more, and we are called dead. 

XLIII. 

We must remember that we can ask anything. 

And we are to know, '' no good thing will be 
withheld," 

And what is more to the great work of life than 
health ? 

We are to know God does not see flesh as sin. 
Behold, says Job, ** Yet in my flesh shall I see God, 
and mine eyes shall see and not another." 

Life is a- blessing, but we stand afar off in our 
selfish lives, groping on in the darkness, and see it 
not. Now it says, *' Take up your cross and fol- 
low Me ;'" remember, it says your cross. 

And whatever is our greatest weight, let us turn 
from it, and by the power that our Father gives, 
" these signs shall follow them that believe." 

Then ye shall have health and strength of the 
Sunlight of God. 

And there will follow the opening of ' the blind 
life and the raising of dry bones from the Jehosha- 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 67 

phat of theory to the walking, and leaping, and 
praising God for Life. 

Now, how much time do we give to these things 
that are the ''Only Life"? A few short words 
called prayer, hastily uttered, without any mean- 
ing or heart sincerity. 

This is what most of us do. 

Yet years are spent among the classics, and we 
thirst for more, thinking we have not half com- 
menced the work we desire, while the great sub- 
ject of Life is a sealed book to us, and we continue 
uttering a few words morning and evening, calling 
ourselves by the name of Christ, Christians, and 
when any one speaks to us on these things of God 
we think that they themselves are bereft of their 
senses and are in need of a physician. 

The Great Physician is attended by our theoret- 
ical opinions, and is told, '' Hitherto shalt thou 
come into our great phylacteries and temples, and 
no further." 

Thus we go on. * 

And by and by the doctor and pastor stand by 
our bedside, and we ask. Is there no hope ? The 
doctor and pastor are mystified. 

They say the case is incurable. 



68 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

They state how and at what time the trembling 
life shall pass out. 

They then go down to their houses, or some sim- 
ilar scene. 

But one of God's children, who knows the living 
God, and no longer permits fear or custom to defy 
the armies of the living God of the Israel of Life, 
comes in, and the weeping ones say, Is there noth- 
ing that can be done ? 

And they hear the words, *' Look unto Me and 
live. * ' And they hear the words, * * Drive from your 
lives your selfishness ; let others live as well as 
yourselves, and the God of all Life shall give 
to your beloved one Life and Liberty ; Life in 
Christ, and Liberty in the free Mercy of that Life." 
Then all is quiet save the gentle breath of the 
loved one grasped from your selfish theory, and 
given back to your anguished life ; back to health, 
back to your home and your children. 

This the doctors find in their coming (and they 
go away full of mystery as before). 

Now, the knowledge that '' the Spirit beareth 
witness to our spirit" should be studied as any 
branch of education. 

That we are life and not death, and that we are 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 69 

the children of life and not the property of man- 
made thinking and the terror of death— these are 
the things to study, these the object of living. 

Why should not our children be instructed in 
these things as well as music, art, and literature ? 
Thus preserve them from sorrow and a purposeless 
life, asking us. Is there no hope ? and we as power- 
less by our blmd lives as they. 

Surely, if anything is attained by years given to 
music, art, and literature, we can attain at least 
as much of the study of Life by devoting years 
thereto. 

And we must do this or our homes will be ever 
the pest-houses of misfortune, and no Samaritan 
of Life to pour in oil and wine. 

We do know that mankind thirst for something 
other than suppositional theory, or we would not 
see the suffering ones break away from precon- 
ceived ideas and get off beds to which they have 
been confined for years, and are not afraid to tell 
the story that the Life of Christ, bearing witness to 
our spirit, has made them "free indeed." And 
the scorn and almost contempt lent by well-nigh 
all to whom these things are related is the cross to 
bear till the world awakens to the " Life hid with 
Christ in God." 



70 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

XLIV. 

We do know that we seek release from sin, sick- 
ness, and the blight and terror of death. And yet 
if God sent sin to tempt us, sorrow and sickness to 
punish, and death to make all life a blight, by what 
right do we seek relief ? 

In fact, if God, the All Power, sends these to us, 
we have no right to ask release. 

The very act of asking freedom from these would 
be in itself disobedience. Let us do as He tells 
us, *' Come now, and let us reason together," and 
it must be from God to us, from Father to His 
children, and realize God our Father in the earth 
of body as in the heaven of soul. 

And if we would reach the eternal understanding 
of Life, Truth, and Love, we must study the 
words of our Master, *' These signs shall follow 
them that believe,'* with as much avidity as we do 
art, music, and literature. 

Jesus healed the sick and put away error. 

Was all this done to prove his God-being only ? 

Would the little attention that mankind paid 
Him make any amends for His physical suffering ? 
Was it an example to us, and did He say, *' The 
works that I do, ye shall do also, and greater works 
than these,'' only to be applied to that time. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 7 I 

By His telling us, *' Greater works than I do shall 
ye do also," Jesus showed forth the fruits of the 
Spirit, thus giving our daily lives strength. 

We must cease to arrange for God our. Father 
from our erring standpoint, and this will help us 
comprehend, *' I am the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life,'' and will aid us to cease judging the motives 
and acts of our fellow-inortals. 



XLV. 

We must represent Life, or the coming of Jesus 
was in vain. 

We can in nowise be life encrusted with death. 

For Life is God, and in " Him is no variableness 
nor shadow of turning." 

We ask ourselves, How are we to attain the wit- 
ness of the Spirit ? 

'* The seed is in itself." 

God sees us as He made us, or there is no solva- 
tion, for God is pure, and hence has not seen us. 

We are so peculiarly tempered that we never see 
the beam in our own eye. 



72 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

The witness of the Spirit comes to us in demon- 
stration. 

Harmony is the kingdom of heaven, and the 
opposite brings to our lives all misfortune. 

It is every one's duty to make life cheerful and 
bright. 

It is our privilege, given of the birthright of God, 
and our homes should be perfect types of the 
heaven of soul. 

You are ready to say, ** And how can these things 
be, when we have so many annoying duties ?" 

Herein is the showing forth the fruits of the 
Spirit — '*' meekness, temperance, and not render- 
ing railing for railing, but, contrariwise, blessing.'* 

This we can do, and we should hasten to its 
accomplishment. 

We should make it a part of the business of life 
to have our surroundings such as keep us God- 
ward. Burdens and hardships are thus lightened, 
and we. gladly bear them in an atmosphere of love, 
as tlie people on shipboard keep cheerful in a storm 
when they, the captain, and crew are in harmony. 

Mankind is wrestling to be rid of the night of 
inharmony. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 73 

The genuine type of harmony is the manifesta- 
tions of the '* fruits of the Spirit." 

We must hasten to the Siloam of Life. 

We must not linger in the Gomorrah of man- 
made theories, amid the Lot of indiscretion, but 
flee to the Zoar of Hope. 

We are all in Christ's care, for He says, " I am 
thine, thou art Mine," and the heaven declares the 
glory of mind, and the firmament of body showeth 
forth His handiwork. 



XLVI. 

Man's chronology is *' by and by." Man always 
leads a life of unrest, putting off for a coming 
time, ever saying, *' By and by." 

God's chronology is Now. He says, *' Come 
now." 

'' Now is the accepted time." 

This gives peace and life. 

And the wayfaring man need not err therein. 
The wayfaring man comes quietly along the road, 
he thinks not of fear, he knows the King's High- 
way is ever in order, so that his footsteps shall not 



74 • BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

slide, and he goes calmly onward in the Peace the 
King's Highway gives him. 

Let us strive to cease living amid a theory of woe 
that God has not given, and ask ourselves often, 
Whence cometh Life ? Thus seek the knowledge 
of God and Jesus, whom He has sent. 

Searching creation, we find man the only object 
of misery and unhappiness. 

And he proves it daily by looking on life from 
an unholy, theoretical standpoint. 

Fathers and mothers labor, the children around 
them are not taught the aim of life, and they all 
drag onward, only studying evanescent pleasures. 

This makes children appreciate nothing ; their 
lives are spent in a whirlpool of wasted Lime, the 
real meaning of home is lost, and the ring of empty 
vases is all there is left. 

The child is only seen from the theory-limiting 
life of the parents, but we should know God is Life 
in the great depths of the yearning Love Eternal. 

God is Light, and His reflection is on all. 

Man talks of death so constantly his thoughts 
take up the resound ; and thus continuously con- 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 75 

versing of the sorrows of life, stands ever in dread 
of them. 

Life weds not death. 

God gives to us great riches, but we see them not. 

Thus we turn away from the call, *' Come now, 
and let us reason together." 

Jesus, taking up His own body, proves to us the 
soul forever has a body, and can no more be sepa- 
rate than we would suppose a man to walk without 
his legs. 

We do not wonder that what is called death 
looks so terrible, as we assert the soul is torn from 
the body, God having to destroy His own work 
to get soul from body. 

Let us start forward with an earnest determina- 
tion to get away from this frightful slough of irri- 
tating misery that drags us in chains and darkness. 

Let us leave doubting far behind, claim the in- 
heritance that is ours, and take the coming of our 
Master as He demonstrated it. 

Is it not time to awaken from our lethargy, have 
God for our Life, God for our Friend, let go wrath, 
let go displeasure, and thus put away the heathen 
gods which we worship — the gods of self and pride ? 



76 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

How absurd are many of our acts and words ! 

We say, Yes, yes, I believe in Jesus, but you 
know Jesus did not mean what He said, for we 
have no explanation *' that these signs shall follow 
them that believe." 

XLVII. 

Now, it would appear that from our various 
strifes and emulations the place called the other 
world was of no importance to us. 

We act as if this life could be of no use either, as 
it is only spent in making misery, while we waste 
in our hard-hearted luxury abundant means, know- 
ing many of our fellow-mortals have not the neces- 
saries of life. 

We should see that such living cannot demon- 
strate the fruits of the Spirit. 

We make great outcry as to the breaking of law, 
yet we have everything in our lives before the study 
of God our Father, v/ho is our Life. 

And of what use are such lives ? 

Does this manner of spending the precious mo- 
ments lengthen our life ? 

Does it make a grand usefulness come to all ? 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 77 

Is life better for greed ? 

Does it not make long furrows in the face, and 
longer ones in the heart ? 

Thus the family comes up in a lazy idleness, 
perfectly ignorant of the earnest duty of life. 

Is life more a state of mercy than joy ? 

Let us seek to win soul from sense and live in 
the perfect Life. 

And does he not spend his life to enlarge wealth, 
and does he yearn for the Light of Life as well ? 

Does he not grasp wealth, that totters with him 
to a sour old age ; and if this stage is not attained 
he drops, amid the freshness of his manhood, into 
a grave of his own making, full of disappointment 
and despair. 

XLVIII. 

God's creed to man is Life, Truth, and Love. 

It is wafted to us from our every conception of a 
merciful Creator, ** who forgiveth all thy iniquities, 
who healeth all thy diseases." 

Yet behold the way in which we reverse this. 



78 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

We may read all history, and we will find man- 
kind drinking in sorrow and calling to life no light 
nor peace. 

Man goes on all the time as if there could be no 
other creator than himself. 

And his acts are as if he had no other thoughts 
in life but to make money and linger out a cross, 
soured existence. 

But his name should be in the hearts of the sor- 
rowing amid divinest loving memories that come 
from the soul-life of good, in the living he should 
have to God. 

Jesus, the Friend of man, showed us a model of 
life, but we go onward as if He had purposely said, 
'' I tell you these things, but I know beforehand 
that you will not do them/' 

Now, if any one would tell you that you do not 
believe in Jesus you would make one assertion on 
another, saying, What do you mean ? 

Behold, the followers of the pure and holy Mas- 
ter must demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit. 

They must be free from pride and hard-hearted- 
ness. 

They must be free from malice and all ungodli- 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 79 

ness. These come of the pride of life, intellect ; 
and this is absorbed in itself instead of the grand 
conception of Jesus, our Brother. 

We have enough sorrows and misfortunes to be 
surfeited of self. 

And that which brings nothing in its train but 
sickness, sin, and death needs our earnest attention 
to hasten to destroy and awaken to the demon- 
strated Life of the real living. 

The Master's way is plain, but we go onward, al- 
ways talking of the hidden mysteries of God and 
His Gospel, when He who is the Gospel to man 
His brother says, "And a little child shall lead^ 
them." 

Do children lead to hidden mysteries ? 

Behold what our Master says plainly, ''Except 
ye become as little children,'* thus showing that 
the simple trust of children brings us the ** new 
birth.'' 

XLIX. 

''Ye must be born again*' of water and the 
Purity of Peace. 

This makes us strong in our daily living. 

When we cease wrong acts, then we are done 



8o BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

therewith ; thus comes forgiveness, for we are not 
forgiven in the continuance of wrong. 

We cannot have an Ananias peace ; the whole 
life must be right. 

By leaving all disturbing elements out of life we 
seek the Kingdom of Harmony. 

Thus '* we find the peace that passeth all under- 
standing," and begin to get the conception of "ye 
must be born again." 

Thus we see the Immortal, and come to the new 
birth that is ordinarily called *' conversion." 

Thus we comprehend the life-giving words, 
'' Son, give Me thine heart." 

Heart being in the centre of the body, and the 
representation being perfect to us, we then have 
some conception of its meaning, and have some 
idea of our Creator God, and the words of Jesus, as 
He says, " Go, preach My Gospel," '* go, heal the 
sick," *' cast out devils," '* freely ye have received, 
freely give." 

Yet theory tells us these things were for that 
time only, and were only to show forth His power 
as God. 

Now, if these things were only to show His 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. " 8l 

power, the teaching is vain, and we have but to 
cling to material statistics, that kill more often than 
they cure. 

Thus we see how theoretical decisions fill all 
ages with sorrow. 

And a life demonstrating not the fruits of the 
Spirit is bowed in misery while it talks of pro- 
claiming the *' acceptable year of the Lord." 

*' Come now, and let us reason together." 

We are made in God's image, and this takes from 
us every form of wrong by the inexhaustible Life- 
Fountain, the Christ-Principle, the Christ-Life. 

Sin and iniquity cannot abide in Immortality, 
and we see not the I, but the sin. We see not I, 
''the image and likeness of God," but the daily 
determining of sin, sickness, and sorrow. 

We must grow to the realization of the Spirit, 
and know sin and Immortality cannot mix, though 
our theories make them, appear to be clothed with 
Life, 



Behold the glove on your hand, it is but a cover- 
ing woven for its use ; thus see how we make all 
life appear what it is not by our suppositions, that 
would engulf the " Soul Immortal." 
6 



52 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

But with all these things before us we have to 
reason our lives back to God and know He is our 
Father, and Jesus our Brother, who was with God 
before '* the world was." 

Thus, being co-eternal with God by Jesus, our 
Brother, we cannot be harmed, for " He breathed 
on them the Holy Spirit, and Spirit is Substance, 
and God is the substance of things hoped for." 

Are we not laboring to destroy sin and sorrow ? 

Could we be able to do this if they came of the 
Immortal God ? 

As we give up our hold upon sin it leaves us. 

Jesus showed us the way, and we must ** follow 
on to know the Lord." And we are to have life- 
giving proof in all our acts, for He says, "Be ye 
perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.'* 

LI. 

Let us take the outstretched hand of Mercy, our 
Father, and know the ever-living freedom is ours. 

Behold the words of comfort, 

" Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
waters, and he that hath no money ; come ye, buy, 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. S^ 

and eat ; yea, come, buy wine and milk without 
money and without price." Thus we are taught 
of Mercy, and the clinging remnants of past theories 
drift away. 

Let us build up our lives by our Master, and we 
will keep in the pathway of Life. 

We will come to the comprehension of " Bring 
no more vain oblations ; the new moons and the 
Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away 
with ; even the solemn assemblies. Your new 
moons and your solemn assemblies my soul 
hateth." 

LIL 

The way in which lives are spent, is it singular 
people cry out when we say, '* These signs shall 
follow them that believe" ? 

Is it astounding that life has the aspect of mis- 
fortune when we are so hard-hearted ? 

Let us hasten to claim our title in Life, the Israel 
of God. 

And let us know the Zion of existence is ours, 
for He says, " I will place salvation in Zion/* Let 
us realize the world around us is claiming its in- 
heritance in the Comforter, who sends us blessings 
innumerable ; but our selfishness hides them from 
our eyes. 



84 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS, 

Why is it we seek sorrow, when creation is so 
jubilant with joy ? 

Most teaching makes us feel ourselves a sort of 
nonentity made to be cursed, and yet urging our 
claim to the entity of God our Life, as we all know 
entity is the substance thereof, and '' God is the 
substance of things hoped for." 

Behold, Jesus' mission on earth was to show man 
and his Maker to be one, for He says, ** All ye are 
brethren, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God." 

We must arise from our lethargy and be real 
shepherds, gather the sorrowing from the east and 
the west, and sit down with them in the blessing 
of Life, Truth, and Love. 

Yet both teacher and pupil go on in a dull agree- 
ment that demonstrates only sin, sickness, and 
death. 

LIIL 

Is it not time that the waste places blossom as 
the rose ? Is it not time that the war of words 
cease, and the knowledge of the demonstration of 
the fruits of the Spirit should occupy our lives, 
gather the hungry from the wayside, feeding them 
on Life, Truth, and Love, instead of the husks of 
materiality, which involve us in desolation ? Let 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 85 

US seek the shepherds that wait on the Lord, and 
no longer wander from our Father's House. 

Men are very careful in every avenue of business 
to obtain faithful superintendents and machinists, 
who give demonstrations of what they can do by 
the perfect work they produce. 

Yet guardians, teachers, and preachers are taken 
and are given us daily who do none of these things 
in the demonstration of the Spirit, that is to 
'' profit withal." 

We are said to have a decaying body encasing an 
immortal soul. And after this impossibility is 
gotten into the world, this so-called condemned 
criminal is said to be here to praise God and to 
show forth His power. Then the thing called man, 
this life and death mixed, is to praise Life, that is 
God. 

The accused praising the accuser, the poor un- 
fortunate criminal, man, praising the ever-present 
God. 

The so-called miserable sinner, man, the repre- 
senter of death, praising Life. Then some of these 
singularly unfortunate criminals, without any re- 
gard to their state, are damned, and some are 
saved. 

This would not be done by idiot judges among 
these self-same criminals. 



S6 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Yet behold how liberally we accuse God, our 
Creator, of these things to His own children, made 
** in His image." 

God must be Life and Purity, and we, His off- 
spring, must be of His own forming. 

We cannot represent life and death, when He 
says, •' O death, I will be thy plagues !'* ** O 
death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy 
victory ?" " Why will ye die, O house of Israel ? 
And I take no pleasure in the death of him that 
dieth." 

When we see a person spend a long life of good, 
and then see them afraid to go to the Master upon 
whom they say they have been waiting, this gives 
us new thought. 

LIV. 

We speak of the Bible as a precious treasure. 
We make it ' * ours' ' only as a man who owns a fair 
field, with streams and running brooks that would 
turn millions of mills to give work to mankind, but 
he, looking on, says, '* Thou art mine,'' and know- 
ing of the River of Life, gets no blessing himself, 
and hinders others. 

We would not spend so much time telling our 
children to do work that we, by our great supe- 
riority of judgment, knew they could not nor 
would not perform. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 87 

Thus we accuse God our Father and Jesus our 
Brother of doing that for which we would turn a 
man out of the community. 

The more we hearken to the call, " Come now, 
and let us reason together," the more we have the 
Perfect presence in all we see ; and the less we say 
and think of sin and its hold on man, the sooner 
will come to us the Peace of the Perfect man in 
Christ Jesus. 

The fact of Life is in the existence of God, and 
this was manifested in Jesus ; and it is daily made 
plainer to our lives that God is Light. 

And from Light there goes no darkness. 

And from Truth there comes no wrong. 

Every hour brings its care and duties, and there 
is no discharge therefrom ; by striving to see 
clearly these things, we find our lives grovv^ more 
strengthened, and we begin to feel indeed our 
** Father is at the helm.'' 

Joy in labor and Life to aid in the pursuit. 

God to crown all, making us a unit in Himself. 



LV. 

GoD rolls the stone from the sepulchre, and we 
see plainly the Master, Friend, and Brother. 



88 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

We must be diligent. 

The entire creation tells us there is no idleness 
in our Master's Vineyard, and in this the thought 
of sin shall perish of itself. 

So long as we stray in the inheritance of sin we 
will hold to it. 

vVe, being God's children, are "the inheritors of 
light. The more we study the Word, there comes 
to us, *' I am thine/' and by the knowledge that 
we are the substance, the entity of God, we are 
well. 

And it is in the entity or substance of thought 
that we use the appellations Supreme Being, Orig- 
inator of all, thus meaning God. Appellation 
meaning the name of an object, and entity ex- 
pressing the " substance thereof." 

" And Christ, God, the substance of things hoped 
for." 

If we would closely behold our expressions and 
reason with ourselves, we would see that we attrib- 
ute to God acts of which we would not accuse our 
fellow-creatures. 

We never think that we are privileged to come 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 89 

out of these rock-bound caves of superstition and 
spring to Light. 

We make laws that we ourselves will not touch 
with one of our fingers toward giving them to our 
fellow-man, knowing well he would not hearken 
thereto ; yet we call these things God's laws. 

But w^e do this in poverty of thought, as our lives 
are not in the demonstration of the Master. 

By these things all creation appears in chains to 
us. 

All things come to us of the ancient traditions, 
while we are struggling unconsciously for the Light. 

Groping for the Light, we dwell in fear of some 
man-made customs that hinder us in the good we 
yearn to do. 

But amid our cowardice we go toiling on in the 
meshes, striving *' to serve God and mammon." 

Oh, what a condemnation this is to us, as well as 
to our teachers ! 

Have we to toil on and feel this fear of what our 
fellow-creatures will say of our testimony for God ? 

Are those who have been made free from sin and 
sickness, its counterpart, to keep silent ? 



90 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Are those who know the ever-present God to be 
their Life to be kept silent, fearing they will not 
be believed ? 

Did Jesus' own disciples believe Mary when she 
said, *' The Lord has arisen" ? 

And shall we permit the thieves of theory to rob 
us of our trust, and find no Samaritan of Life to 
heal our wounds ? 

Are we to be silenced by fear of men and their 
laws ? 

And does it not say the fruits of the Spirit are 
these — " love, joy, longsuffering, gentleness, good- 
ness, faith, meekness, temperance" ? Against such 
there is no law. 

LVL 

Thus we are set at liberty by the Gospel of our 
Master. 

We have seen persons for years have every symp- 
tom of consumption, and be told by the doctors 
that their lungs were in a very bad way, recover by 
realizing Life to be God, and that Life, the gift of 
God to us, is the birthright of man in the Mind of 
Jesus. 

And we do know that these persons go out and: 
in among us, full of joy and strength. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 9 1 

For God has healed their thoughts from a deter- 
mination to suffer as a part of the inheritance of 
man, and their lives grow in the knowledge of 
walking and leaping and praising God, and they 
are " diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving 
the Lord." 

Many are the cases of healing; is it all nothing ? 

If it is of man it will come to naught, and it is 
time that the scoffers should come forward and 
prove it to be nothing. 

We who have laid on beds of agony for weeks, 
months, days, and years, do we not know there is 
a balm in Gilead ? And are we to be silenced for 
fear of what man may say of us ? 

Jesus says, ** Come unto Me all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and ye shall find rest," and we 
will take Him at His word. 

We have seen the mind in distress comforted by 
realizing, '* These leaves are for the healing of the 
nations ;" and we have seen persons ill with fever, 
and have heard them say, " Master, we are in your 
image, and surely this fever never came from you." 

Then we have known a sweet sleep during which 
the release came, and the sufferer awakened com- 
pletely restored. 



92 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Thus the heart is full of joy without words, the 
pale, worn look goes out in the swine of sin that 
gave it its power, the face shines as the morning, 
the tardy footsteps grow light, and the life shines 
out of God, whom it represents. 

We can bring a cloud of witnesses to attest these 
facts in our lives and those of others. 

We know of homes where the ill-tempers of the 
inmates have become quiet by finding God to be 
Love and Mercy. 

LVII. 

Behold, the healing Master says, " I am the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever.'' Behold, He says, 
** x\sk in faith, nothing wavering.'' 

This is Life, and it is not far away, but here in. 
our midst, for He says, '' The kingdom of heaven is 
within you.'' 

LVHL 

We cannot create Light from darkness ; Time 
keeps us thinking that joy has to be postponed to 
a "by and by," the foretaste of which the life 
shows not. 

Time is only cognizant of these circumstances of 
misery. 

Out of time there is no wrong. We prove this 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 93 

b}^ the Immortal Life that calls us, saying, ** Come 
unto Me all ye that labor, and ye shall find rest.*' 

The perfect peace of the Immortal has no time 
nor wrong. 

LIX. 

We have read each day for years, *' Blessed are 
those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins 
are covered." " Blessed is the man to whom the 
Lord hath not imputed sin, and in whose spirit 
there is no guile." 

And then, '* Thy sins and iniquities I will re- 
member no more." 

Now, God being no respecter of persons, there 
could be no such thing as blessing some and curs- 
ing others ; therefore^ God, *' being too pure to be- 
hold iniquity," is the Author of blessings only. 

** A good fountain sendeth not forth sweet and 
bitter waters." 

And if our daily duties could be analyzed, they 
would give joy and strength instead of constant 
weariness. 

We must keep out of sight the flaming sword of 
theor)\ 



94 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

LX. 

This theoretical sense of things makes life appear 
to us first an outlook of pain and then pleasure, 
both from the same source. 

That would be looked upon as impossible in any- 
thing except our own lives. 

If we were going abroad the subject would oc- 
cupy our minds, and we would make investigations 
as to the journey. 

Eternal Life surely is of more value than any 
journeying, and we must commence to day to give 
it consideration. 

Scripture says, '' The tops of the highest moun- 
tains appeared." 

Why not take this to our lives, and the tops of 
the mountains of Life will arise, and the floods of 
self, sin, and darkness will disappear. 

We can no more find the eternal living by chance 
than we can pick up our daily food in the streets. 

LXL 

As the waters chase each other to the shore while 
the steamer ploughs the waves out of their course, 
so does our material thinking rush from our path- 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 95 

way at sight of Love and Mercy, and the " King 
of Glory comes in/' 

Yet there comes back to us one and another of 
these materia] ripples ; thus our quiet is disturbed ; 
by this we can realize the fig-tree withering in its 
barrenness, and we hasten to the Meribah of Truth, 
lave our lives in the Sea of Life, and materiality 
gives place to the Presence of our Master. 

LXIL 

We must remember the holocaust of sin and 
wrong is just as unnatural as is war, and we must 
arise in the power of the Life that is ours to depart 
therefrom. 

We are able, in the strength of our God-being, to 
work out our salvation from the body of this death, 
and walk by the Living Waters, hang our harps 
material on the willows of weakness, and take from 
the Tree of Life the Golden Harp, '' that ye do 
justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God." 

We are by no means at work to help ourselves ; 
we delegate our thinking to others, and go on in 
sorrow. 

Clear out the money-changers of self, and the 
" King of Glory shall come in." 

And when we shall lay these unclean things 
aside, we shall receive the blessing of His salvation. 



96 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

LXIII. ' 

We have to lead a noble life to show forth the 
fruits of the Spirit. 

The reason we see men so indifferent is that all 
things holy are regarded a mystery. 

Let us attune our lives to Love, go forth gladly 
to labor, bearing our sheaves with us in the already 
demonstrated life of Christ. 

Thus being in prayer full of the knowledge that 
we are made in God's image, we are whole and 
happy. Let us take Jesus at His word, as did the 
man with the withered hand. 

Thus the chaff theoretical must flee away ; then 
comes the baptism of Light, that opens the blind 
eyes. 

LXIV. 

Now men make deductions from the past as prec- 
edent for the present and future. 

People criticise and listen. 

Newspapers copy, and the scientific world judges 
and accepts. 

Then can we not take the like and have our Mas- 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 97 

ter's work now, and render to Life the respect we 
give to theory ? 

LXV. 

Life is either a theory of man or a reality of our 
Maker. 

It must be decidedly one or the other. 

By making suffering an entailed estate we are 
cheated of our birthright. 

Let us read our Bibles, digesting the words for 
our souls and bodies as one in the Master. Thus 
reasoning, the Bible is of unspeakable comfort. 

Thus the Eden of Life is ours, and the desert 
blossoms as the rose. 



LXVI. 

** Who is wise, and shall understand these things 
prudent, and ye shall know them ?'' 

Now, let us decide, Is the peace of Christ the 
desire of our lives ? 

Can the great thirst be of mechanical origin ? 
Can it be a passion ? 

Can it be only enthusiasm ? 

7 



98 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Or is it but a momentary observance of forms ? 

All of these things we have to decide by bringing 
forth the fruits of the Spirit. 

Let us cease eating the dependent bread of theory, 
with its scrambles for evanescent earth-born power. 

Let the vats overflow with the wine of Love and 
Mercy. 

A right living we inherit of our Father. 

We must launch out in the deep, and help the 
helpless. 

There are many of us w^ho from our early child- 
hood have been members of a church, yet our lives 
have not corresponded with our profession. 

And it is life but in name, a sepulchre full of 
sicknesSj.sin, and death. 

These things should be the object and subject of 
our lives. 

Let ** us consider the lilies of the field, how they 
grow." 

How do they grow ? 

By living a natural lily-life — free, simple, and 
natural. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 99 

LXVII. 

We rarely think of the misery which we may in- 
flict on others until some occasion crushes our foot 
against the inevitable wall of self ; then we open 
our eyes to Life, seeing others have a right also. 

It is the realization of Life that gives man power 
to help himself. 

Lxvin. 

The yesterdays of clouds harm not to-day's sun- 
shine ; neither can any act of man mar the Life Im- 
mortal. 

The Book of God is mapped out in the creation 
around us. 

Yet we unwittingly gaze, gathering shells mate- 
rial, and as unwittingly throw them one by one 
away. 

Yet we keep the Father's im^age, and if the scales 
lent by theory material could fall, we would then 
see the '* lilies as they grow." 

LXIX. 

Will man be so forgetful of his life-labor as to 
curse it ? 

Will a loving mother, looking on her deformed 
child, curse it ? 



lOO BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Think ye, then, God curses us and makes us 
slaves to sin as a part of the so-called human 
nature we inhabit ? 

We must overcome the Adam and Eve of thought 
in determining against sin, and thus be relieved of 
the weight that besets us. 

We do know a loving mother most tenderly 
loves the deformed child, seeing not its condition ; 
and is God less or less good ? 

Legions of evil cannot bind us to sin ; we are the 
offspring of the Life that is God. 

Then, on to duty ! 

Love sends us at every heart-thrill its message of 
Life, yet we turn away, saying, '' T am holier than 
thou. " But the Voice of Free Grace cries, ' ' Escape 
to the Mountain,'' and the Waters of Life's Foun- 
tain flow freely to all. 

LXX. 

We talk so much of sin and iniquity that it en- 
velops us as night. We must free ourselves, and 
*' open the year of release to all generations." 

We marvel no more at the lives of men, for in- 
stead of finding quiet and comfort in theevery-day 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. . lOl 

life possessions, man chains himself thereto, forget- 
ting their uses. 

Thus no one sees any farther than the taskmaster 
custom, which comes, an unwelcome guest, rob- 
bing us of our peace. 

LXXI. 

Hardness of heart cannot give joy, yet people 
grasp it as dearly as life. 

We do not acknowledge blessing, or our lives 
would be less suffering, and our acts more just. 

Yet we drag on, making work a burden, seeing 
not the sheltering life of Christ, as He wept over 
Jerusalem. 

*' O Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and 
stonest them that are sent unto thee, how would I 
have gathered thee as a hen does her chickens 
under her wings, and ye would not." 

LXXII. 

It requires time to learn anything. And how 
much do we give to spiritual subjects ? 

To get man to this study is no idle task. 

By acknowledging theory has power leaves us 
helpless. 



I02 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Thus we take away from our lives the concep- 
tion of God. 

Behold, we are ever talking of prayer ! Do we 
think of its real meaning ? 

And to pray is to draw nigh to God in any way 
from which we get the most peace. 

No one can teach us how to pray but the Mas- 
ter, who said, " After this manner pray ye, Our 
Father, who art in heaven, give us this day our 
daily bread." 

This is Jesus' benediction to us, and is ratified 
in the Evening of Memory, as He sat there blessing 
our lives, sa5nng, " Do this in memory of Me ;'* and 
this is borne out in acts of mercy, as He thus dem- 
onstrated in His own life-acts, saying, '' The works 
that I do, ye shall do also." 



LXXIII. 

We think what we call death comes of God, our 
co-eternal life, when it and all its concomitants in 
misery— cruel lives and bitter enslaving thoughts 
— come of the selfish lives we lead. 

We must remember these enslaved thoughts have 
no outgo except by their equal material direction. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. IO3 

Our lives are of God our Father, and not of a 
misery made of our own thinking. 

We will find it no idle task to empty our thoughts 
of that in which all our lives have been spent, but 
we must be diligent. 

Lives made up of the history of human thinking 
represent not God, the Author of Life. 



LXXIV. 

The highest and holiest wish of man should be 
to keep the whole human race at heart in a bond 
of purity. 

The waters that flow by us in the glad river and 
the clear bosom of the lake reflect the pure heavens 
above us. 

We never think of the fact that water is the only 
thing in creation in its pure state in which Vv'e can 
see our faces. 

If we would take this simile to our lives, the Water 
of the regenerating Holy Spirit would be every 
day a blessing to us instead of the mystery that we 
permit our theories to make it. 

Then we could see the meaning, " Come ye to 
the waters," " And by water and the Holy Spirit." 



I04 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

We must sift these things and reason, and thus 
renew our lives in the Life the Master demonstrated. 

Then we will lead no longer idle, supposititious 
lives, that show not forth the fruits of the Spirit, 
but move around with a new grace that is born of 
Life, and enjoy the treasures of the storehouse of 
God that is on every hand. 

LXXV. 

We find ourselves struggling in sickness without 
a friend, and we murmur and mourn. 

And the doctor comes in, and we take our destiny 
from his expression. We have the impress of his 
thoughts at once that we cannot recover. 

We remember in our own lives, when the doctors 
desired our consent to their methods of medication, 
we turned *away, saying, " When life must go it will 
be in peace, and not by your ' experiments.' '' 

The sick are at the mercy of the doctors, and 
taking their decisions, find no peace for the body. 

Then the spiritual doctor comes in, but the soul- 
body is to him invisible ; yet he talks and makes 
statements the which his own life has not carried 
out. 

And how could it be possible for the poor suf- 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 105 

ferer to think of these things amid so much bodily 
anguish ? 

At times in history we are told that men refuse 
what is called '* the comforts of religion/' and it 
is this very thing on the part of the non-demon- 
strated lives of the teachers and doctors that pro- 
duces unwittingly the result they would prevent. 

Men say to themselves, '* Their lives are as mine ; 
their acts are no different ; and if what they tell 
me is so precious, it would show forth itself in all 
they do, as well as Vv^hat they utter with their lips 
only." 

We can see by these things with what care we 
should select persons to give consolation, how their 
lives should show forth ** that ye do justly, love 
mercy, and walk humbly with God." 

But they do as others, yet we leave to their care 
the precious existence, '* the express image of His 
Person," just as if they could take it to their own 
keeping. 

Behold, they are the first summoned in illness 
and sorrow, when Jesus says, '' In Me is thine 
help.'' 

When if, for one moment, we could reason with 
our Father, we would find that He only sees us as 



Io6 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

He made us, we would be whole just as the blind 
man, whose mind caught the Light of Jesus, and 
said, '* This I know, that whereas I was born blind, 
now I see." 

The Purity of Jesus was in his mind, and he 
knew that Life also was of Jesus, and his eyes 
opened. 

But the swine inhuman thought makes all ap- 
pear enveloped in mystery, so we have to work 
hard to realize we are the children of God. 

And the w^orld passes by on the other side in 
sorrow and suffering, saying, " Send for the doc- 
tor ; that is all that can be done ;" thus we are 
left in distress, to do as best we may. 



LXXVL 

** As long as thou doest well to thyself, men will 
think well of thee." But the swine in human flesh 
wait on us in prosperity, and as rapidly vanish, 
amid anguish and misfortune ; and as the slaves 
of suffering press us, we struggle for freedom. 

And we turn our longing gaze away from all 
these in our desire of relief. 

And we must be free, and lose no time in its 
accomplishment. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 107 

We find the colonizing of ourselves in theory 
does not do the work we desire. 

We still have hungry and thirsty thoughts and 
lives among us. 

Who will come to Macedonia and help us ? 

We must look at the slaves of men for genera- 
tions, and this will help us in thinking of Life as 
the free man in Christ Jesus, 

The great emancipation act of President Lincoln 
did not set the slaves to work, nor did it give them 
work and take away their impressions of slavery ; 
but ** the knowledge of freedom" gave them an 
impetus to labor, without reference to their former 
masters. 

And this knowledge to the time-weary slave is 
ours, in God our Father. 

We are the children of God. We have the 
knowledge of this when He says, *'And this is 
Life, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." 



Lxxvn. 

Thus the study of Life opens the Bible to us as 
plainly as we read the daily papers. 

Have we not heard enough of sin and wrong ? 



Io8 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Are we not surfeited with sorrow every day ? 

Surely we may be at liberty to exchange our 
physician ! We have had enough of the theory of 
sin, of which the babe in the womb knows noth- 
ing, and iniquity, its counterpart. 

A ship arrived at Castle Garden in the city of 
New^ York. 

A ship-load of paupers ! 

Old m.en and maidens, young men and children, 
and wives and mothers, all in poverty of the direst 
sort. 

The President of the United States and his Cab- 
inet met in council. 

They decided, '* with one consent,'' '* We will not 
have these paupers, indigent aged, and young ones 
as well. We have enough ; we must do our best 
to rid the country of such representatives.'' Has 
not the soul the right to say. We will not have these 
paupers of sin, sickness, and death palmed upon 
us of iniquity in heredity and condemnation ? We 
will be clean, and have done with the midnight 
darkness of the Egypt of self in all uncleanness ! 

The Life in God is ours ! The thought advanced 
to us in Jesus' Life is ours, and we will be weary 
no more, but go to Christ our Brother, and take 
our stand as our right of birth in the Israel of God. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 109 

Let US live to a salvation of Life, and our lives 
will be comforted as we grieve amid all the mis- 
fortunes by the way. 

LXXVIIL 

A LIFE hid with Christ in God shows forth the 
fruits of what our Master demonstrated. 

Better by far take lessons of the bee, the bud, 
and the blossom than our theory-making selves. 

Behold, our Father says,*' Go to the ant, thou 
sluggard ; consider her ways, and be wise !" 

Man makes his life up of theory, and gets sick 
and passes out of sight of his fellows"; but he, 
having opened his eyes on Life, is now really alive. 

We see men live to eat, and eat to live ; by such 
monstrous misconceptions of I^ife, is it startling 
that we get sick and do what the v/orld calls 
*'die' ? 

O God, our Father, what lives men live ! Yet 
the spires of the churches still point upward, and 
the congregations are at worship therein ! 

And they go down to their houses as usual, think- 
ing no more of the blessings of life than they did 
before. 



no BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

By the teachings we receive from our cradles 
up, is it marvellous that we suffer ? 

Can we wonder at anything that comes to us ? 

Behold families as they are reared ! 

Behold sorrow, sickness, suffering, and disgrace, 
all called the providence of God ! 

All this is regarded as the work of the pure and 
holy God ! 

This makes creation weep, and thick clouds of 
sorrow encompass us. 

LXXIX. 

We attest to being Christians, and keep onward 
in our unholy thinking, at variance with our neigh- 
bor and ourselves ! We attest to these things, and 
do deprive ourselves of all power to help ourselves 
in the midnight of bodily anguish, amid the out- 
cries for life and its exceeding thirst for the 
" Water Brooks/' 

Soul-peace gives us bodily quiet, and we cannot 
argue it out of life. 

LXXX. 

We cannot be too careful of our homes and the 
outgrowth of the family. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. Ill 

We send our boys from home as soon as they 
can get employment, and we think not of the little 
shielding care we have given their lives. 

The boys learn material lessons. The girls are 
left to the care of an idle sentiment, that brings 
them only sorrow. 

These things ought not so to be. 

Would a man make a magnificent work to de- 
stroy it ? 

Has God made us to destroy us ? 

Behold, " God made man in His own image, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
man became a living soul !'* 

What is soul ? 

It is beyond the power of man to explain ! 

Yet we say soul in body ! 

Yet we say body dies ! 

Yet we say soul lives ! 

And we do not say what soul is doing without 
its much-abused companion, body ! 

But we say soul has gone ! Gone where ? 



112 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

And we say body is dead because of sin, and be- 
cause of that sin it has gone out of life, and has 
taken the soul that is Immortal with it ! 



And we continue these assertions, and keeping 
our lives in darkness, as we insist on looking on 
the body as sin, and call it the habitation of the 
immortal soul. 

A live man asleep with a body of death ! 



LXXXI. 

If we will draw nigh to God, we will feel that 
He draws nigh to us, and that '' He sees us as He 
made us/' 

And we will cease to regard body a myth, barely 
able to be mentioned for fear some evil will step 
in at the suggestion. 

Even the voices of our babes are hushed as they 
ask questions. 

Mothers, take your boys and girls, and snatch 
them from the ignominy that your overweening 
delicacy brings to your lives. 

If you do not tenderly tell them of life, some 
serpent of your society will plentifully do this for 
you. Thus you thrust your beautiful children into 
degradation by your own acts. 



BE'.UTIFUL BUILDERS. II3 

Thus we condemn life to a misery of our own 
creation, when it is a boon of God. 

And if God had need to create to see us in sin 
and to destroy us, we are most miserable. 

By this thinking we have vagrant " gods and 
lords many," wasting time and precious material, 
and we stand afar off, accusing the Giver of it all. 



LXXXII. 

We wonder no more that people pass out of the 
body ! They get tired of living, and do not desire 
to continue life with its constant care, for the little 
teuure which theory gives is so helpless to aid, 
that they soon pass out of sight of material-mak- 
ing man. 

Men firing at a target all their lives become tired, 
and commence a search for the object toward 
which all their efforts have been sent ; and finding 
nothing, they get dispirited, and life is a blank. 

By the very call, ** Com.e now, and let us reason 
together," we find in this privilege that God our 
Father makes us His equals. 

Men do not reason with beggars, but with 
equals. 

Suppose the Chief Justice of the United States 



114 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

should call us to council ; at that moment he would 
recognize us as equals. 

And in this call of our Father we are at once 
made whole in Him, and this acknowledgment of 
His presence takes away all Life's ills and makes us 
well. And we must recognize Life in this w^ay, or 
we go on in suffering. Few think of this, and few 
keep it in mind after they are healed. 

LXXXIII. 

The decay of humanity is frightful, but it is 
looked upon as natural. 

And this bare supposition of its naturalness gives 
less power to clear away the slough of despond. 

Now, what we must have is the comprehension 
that we came of Life, and by this fact whispered 
into our ears, We will help ourselves and others. 

LXXXIV, 

Man is a great and blessed reality, and he must 
go on to conquer. 

A power capable of eternal existence does not 
also possess a power to annihilate. 

We must welcome these thoughts, and realize 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. II5 

error as nothing, and it will unclasp its hold on 
our lives ! 

We cannot mar the real if we would ; the Eternal 
Limner is the Counterpart, thus we cannot be de- 
faced. 

LXXXV. 

Life is loaded past the gunwales with theoretical 
decisions. 

We must unload, or sink amid disease and de- 
spair. 

We must ship the old cargo material, and this 
will bring us to the Harbor of Life, the Orient of 
the Sun of Righteousness. 



LXXXVL 

Joy and peace are not to be found in the self-life 
of mankind. 

Mercy and truth meet when we bring forth the 
fruits of the Spirit. 

And this we can do, or the words of Jesus are 
vain. • 

But behold how people cling to self, and donate 
to their best beloved of earth-life the eternal 



Il6 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

fires, if they do not acknowledge to a belief in a 
theory in which they themselves live. 

LXXXVII. 

The innumerable flowers of Mercy spring to life 
in *' judge not, and ye shall not be judged." 

And we must make every effort to get out of the 
darkness of self-life. 

Over the doors of most homes is written, " This 
house is for me and mine." 

We must open our lives to the sunlight of God, 
and joy and peace will spring up in the once weary, 
darkened homes. 

LXXXVIII. 

God is success ; His works prove it. 

The works of our Father are all before us, and 
the Life of our Friend and Brother, Jesus, was a 
constant demonstration. Yet we turn away, saying 
that Jesus did not mean that we should demon- 
strate His Life here when He said, "The king- 
dom of heaven (the condition of harmony) is within 
you.'* 

St. Paul says, ** I was born free." 

And the centurion said, " With great price pur- 
chased I this freedom." 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. II 7 

Some of us get to the Light ; some of us wait in 
the byways of self, and have to work with " the 
great price*' mentioned by the centurion, to find a 
glimpse of the Spirit. 

But leaving self outside brings us at once to the 
presence of the King. 

LXXXIX. 

The enslaved thought and the chained slave are 
both subjects of commiseration. 

By ceasing to colonize man-made decisions, the 
hungry life realizes its Maker. 

This is what we think Jesus meant in saying, 
** Call no man your Feather upon earth, for one is 
your Father, even God," and when He spoke of 
** leaving houses and lands for My sake, and the 
gospel's." 

In the fast-developing future people will come 
to the Light and to the millennium of soul. 

XC. 

Let us continue with unceasing avidity in search 
for Truth, and we will find the joy of the promise, 
** They that wait on the Lord shall run and not be 
weary ; they shall walk, and not faint." 



Il8 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

And the Bible will be to us the Book of books, 
instead of a mystery. 

XCI. 

We do not have *' dominion" over Life because 
we will not leave out self, continuing as we do to 
insist that Jesus did not intend His demonstrated 
life-acts to be applied to our daily need, but to an- 
other world. 

Do we know any other sphere of existence where 
they could be more needed ? 

The chains of self-life bind us as did the ancient 
bond of the slave. 

By a word President Lincoln set millions free. 
To that decree men bowed in adoration, and none 
more than the emancipated slave. 

But in releasing the captives of sorrow, the 
emancipation of our lives from self, we cry out, 
*' Oh, this cannot be here ; it is for the ' Home Over 
There!'" 

But where is the day and place of soul-freedom ? 
And when shall we hear, ** Come unto Me, and I 
will give you rest" ? 

Do slaves in chains have this said to them of 
their masters ? 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. ^ II9 

VVe can be assured we are not left alone of God, 
or the words and life of Jesus are but a hidden 
mystery, that He Himself did not explain. 

When will we be free from man-made theories, 
that wash out all hope and bind us to sickness and 
sorrow ? 

XCII. 

Could Jesus' Love harm us ? 

If this could be so, we thereby make God a party 
to misfortune, and a looker-on of the woes Jesus 
came to heal. 

We must realize ** self-thinking" has no power 
to control ; this will help us continue a diligent 
pursuit of our inheritance. 

We must claim the whole of Life, not a part. 

We must go forward to the Real Source, and not 
permit our pride and ignorance to choke the good 
seed. 

Let us be sure to keep sin away from our 
lives, and then we will be present to the All- Power. 

And we know Vv^e really have a Father in God, 
and that no power can deprive us of Him. 

To this position all our lives and energies must 



I20 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

be bent, even though the way may seem to "be 
hedged in.' ' 

XCIII. 

We are assured saying prayer is the soul's sin- 
cere desire does not explain what prayer is to our 
lives, nor what it is in substance. 

We want to be free to the comprehension of ** I 
will give you rest." We want to know the sub- 
stance of things hoped for. We want to know 
Spirit, and not a theory unexplainable. 

We desire to know Life is ours, and realize we 
are drinking of the Living Waters. 

We know^ the Eternal Presence unites man with 
his Maker. 

Let us bravely work on, knowing evil has no ex- 
istence in Life, and listen to our Father's voice, 
calling us all the time, " It is I, be not afraid." 

Then the scales will fall from our eyes, and we 
are made whole. 

And this we do know, '* and testify to what we 
have seen," and who can hinder our evidence ? 

We have seen pitiful faces shine with the Truth 
that set them free in realizing their birthright of 
soul-purity. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 121 



Man}^ persons say, ** I cannot understand what 



you mean !" 



Neither could those comprehend Greek or Latin 
who have never learned them. 

If we only take lessons of self, how can we know 
what are the fruits of '* waiting on the Lord "? 

We are to remember Life is of God, and by tak- 
ing ourselves to Him in the witness of the Spirit, 
*' comes the fruits." 

And we must have this, or drop by the way, eat- 
ing husks, when there is ** enough and to spare in 
our Father's house/' 

We must cease to give place to the devouring 
beasts of sickness and sorrow. 



XCIV. 

We must awake to Life. You will say this is not 
telling us what it is to live ! Do we not feel life 
in every action ? Then is not this proof that we 
cam.e of life and not death ? 

Every action is life, yet we lay no stress thereto, 
but go on in our blindness, and continue saying. 
Life is evil, and sin is for us of God. 



122 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

xcv. 

When sin presented itself to Jesus, He said, 
** Get thee behind me, Satan ;" and this Satan of 
death robs life of its possessions by our giving in- 
tellect power and place to translate Life to convey 
death, thus making the demonstrated life of Jesus 
of no avail. 

These suppositions tell us the prayer. 

** Our Father was not to be our own, but the 
property of a statistical position, that says, We 
cannot cure you by asking, and* there is no God 
that you can ask, for all Life and words of Jesus 
are left to us to explain ; and as we cannot make 
your faces shine in the comfort of life, you cannot 
find peace yourselves, because we have it not ; and 
what our intellect cannot attain the simple fisher- 
men of Galilee left out of their narrative, for they 
were unlearned/' 

Parents always see their offsprings as children 
only. They never realize that the boy is a man, 
but in all instances hold them in mind as babes. 

And so our Father sees us as He made us, and 
not as we make ourselves. 

In this simplicity we realize the Eternal Source 
of Life. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. I 23 

This gives health to the bones and rest to our 
lives. 

Was it theory that gave the martyrs comfort ? 

Was it the ecstasy of the hour that stayed their 

souls ? 

We do well know, in such a time nothing could 
comfort them but a knowledge that all is Life. 
And amid their flames they must ha\^e had the 
knowledge and not the supposition of Life. 

Since it must have been knowledge of Eternal 
Life that kept the martyrs, is it not the same that 
drives away sin, sickness, and sorrow, and leads us 
to comprehend, ** O Death, I will be thy plagues" ? 



XCVI. 

The tyrant self slays all things, and leaves us 
trembling by the *' roadside.'* 

We go forth, taking life to preserve life. Be- 
hold the numbers that rush to the sea-shore and 
the mountains to heal life ! 

They have taken the privilege of life in animals, 
and in their nervous exhaustion from having eaten 
the flesh of the trembling, affrighted animal, they 



124 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

have to leave their elegant homes for places to 
recruit wasted strength. 

These have no resource but to repeat the nau- 
seous dose; thus, amid their sloth and fashion, 
they pass out of sight, v^hile depending upon taking 
life to keep life. 

'* What is man ?" ** He is no more than the food 
he eats, since he obliges himself to acknowledge 
his dependence thereupon." 

Disease and distress of all kinds can be traced in 
the taking of the lives of the trembling animals ; 
yet we go on saying, we are given no power to help 
ourselves, and that we would be unable to live 
without this general slaughter of the innocent 
creatures in our fields. 

You are ready to say, And how can we live ? 



XCVII. 

Perhaps in your life you may have had sorrow. 

Perhaps you may have been laid up for years an 
helpless cripple, so dependent on others that life 
was a burden to you, while you, too, may have 
been a burden to those around you. 

Perhaps you prayed, perhaps others also asked 
in prayer, yet no relief was vouchsafed. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. I 25 

At one time we heard a good, patient soul say, 
** We have heard that prayer for three years ; better 
stop now, ' Ah ! God forgot long ago/ " 

This plain language, uttered in earnest from 
an honest heart, gave life an impetus. This made 
us realize something was to be done beside words 
uttered in enthusiasm and lost in theory. 

The gods of fear and lords of custom take our 
time, and we have to attend these, therefore we 
cannot work in the Vineyard. 

And to these '* gods and lords,'' in their tyran- 
nical observances, we give our best hours. 

The first fresh hue of youth and the strength of 
all .life's labor is passed in haste to gather riches 
and pleasures. 

Riches that fade at our grasp and pleasures that 
open the door to sin, sickness, and sorrow ! 

Behold, our lives running away from the Maker 
of the birds, the buds, and blossoms, to the sicken- 
ing thing called pleasure, instead of the Orient of 
Life, our Maker, and Jesus our Friend ! 

Now, it is said this is what the world does ; and 
how can it be helped ? 

We hasten to extinguish fires, and to get rid of 
epidemics. 



126 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Have we not the means of Life at hand to escape 
the leprosy of sin and sickness ? 

We will have a struggle, but we can awake from 
self to our Life in the All-Power, and will come out 
conquerors. 

xcvin. 

When a farmer clears a field, he has hard work 
because of the undergrowth and knotty old 
stumps. Yet he works with joy, for he knows the 
soil has life, and that it will bring a rich harvest to 
him. 

And as we see the fair fruit of Life coming to 
us, let us fear no one, but regard God, who will 
never forsake us. 

Thus holding to the Enduring, the Good, and the 
True, we leave ** out lords many and gods many/' 



XCIX. 

How often do we see people rush into a state of 
life called union that is utterly devoid of it in 
every instance ! 

Unselfish love makes unselfish lives I 

By this we see how Life and its conditions are 
regarded and entirely absorbed. 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. I 27 

Though we are the children of God, we do not 
acknowledge Him in our ways ; but as the sun is 
hid on a day of clouds, ** so gods many and lords 
many" hide Life from us ; yet the lilies the waves 
have swept under are the fair lilies of the field, 
and so are we ever the children of God. 

And we are bold enough in our human pride to 
place theory beside the " Ark of the Covenant/' 

Behold, how soon it is struck down by the 
knowledge of All Life ! 

We thus realize God our Father cannot be 
steadied on the sandy foundations of human think- 
ing. 

This explains to us the conversion of St. Paul, 
how the scales fell from his eyes. 

We grasp this slowly, but it will come to us. 

Most people exist upon what is called pleasure, 
and this failing them, they pass out to what men 
call death ! 

Behold the families of the wealthy, in their im- 
posed misery ! 

We can go out from th*e charnel-house of man- 
made living to the peace of God, '* who giveth to 
all men liberally, and upbraideth not !" 



128 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Even our daily acts and expressions awaken to 
remind us of God our Life. 

In our routine of thought we write AM, and the 
Bright and Morning Star, I AM, is before us. ** I 
am the Bright and Morning Star/' 

I AM God the Father, and Jesus thy brother, 
crowning all life with the rubies of sympathy and 
love. 

From God only can come these, and not their 
opposite. 

Behold, in our barren lives we do not even profit 
by what theory calls holy ! 

C. 

Amid the homes of poverty and distress, is it 
startling that the helpless ones do not see Life ? 

Is it any amazement the absorbed glutton, amid 
so-called pleaures, lives on, and the words of Life 
that may fall on the ear from the soft-cushioned 
pew in the luxurious church is not understood, 
and the oft-repeated tale comes to us, ** They died 
unconverted " ? 

Is it astounding that there are so few evidences 
of the fruits of the Spirit, while we see so many 
dead in luxury and self? 



BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. I29 

And why do we complain of others while our 
lives are so empty ! 

We must have our lives as our Master showed us. 

And we must show it forth by a happy result. 

A life given to self is a harbor of suspicion. 

We see lives thus given to self, and the eventide 
is but suspicion and misfortune. 

Behold, every step of Jesus' life was love and 
sacrifice ; and how can we go on calling ourselves 
Christians, when we give vent to the stings of 
cruel suspicion and bitter enmity? Even when we 
would help others, it is with a cruel stare, as much 
as if w^e would say, ** Come not nigh ; I am holier 
than thou !'* 

CI. 

Can we expect to cure the sick by telling them 
they cannot recover ? 

Can we expect a child to obey when we are ever 

telling it of its faults ? 

We need encouragement and love, and not cold 
philosophy. 

Let us make our lives glad and pure, as Jesus 
gave them back to us. 

9 



130 BEAUTIFUL BUILDERS. 

Whatever ills we have, we are the creators 
thereof. 

First on the list of duties is Christ's law of love, 
and no other greater follows. 

Let the tongue of suspicion cease ! 

Let the tongue of venom write anguish no more 
in any hearts ! 

Let life be Love ; this gives peace to the eventide. 

Let us prize Life, and make it the type of our 
Master, and strive to a perfect union in thought, 
word, and deed ! 

Let us help all to nobly live, and show forth the 
endowed Life we have ! 

By so doing we will cease seeing ruined homes, 
and we will look down from the watch-tower with 
the powers of Life our own. 

Thus Life made pure by heaven-born tenderness 
will show to us that God's gifts do not fetter us. 

And, finally, a life rounded out in the beauty of 
holiness shall be recognized as the handiwork of 
the Beaictiful Builders, 



it^i-im 



Far down the isles of the misty past , 

Away in the silence of years, 
Were builders, who reared to the Living God 

A temple, with prayers and tears. 



There is eloquence in the midst of Silence, ^4f we listen well;'' 
and in Solitude we may enjoy sweetest companionship. These 
holy guests are Thoughts passing in review before our mental 
vision, making Silence musical and peopling Solitude with 
swaying multitudes. 

It is Thought which formulates and beautifies ; for, ^'as a man 
thinketh, so is he," and ^^ what we are is the result of what we 
have thought." 

The problem of life is an unfathomable mystery if considered 



I 



Far down the isles of the misty past. 

Away in the silence of years, 
Were builders, who reared to the Living God 

A temple, with prayers and tears. 



There is eloquence in the midst of Silence, "if we listen well;" 
and in Solitude we may enjoy sweetest companionship. These 
holy guests are Thoughts passing in review before our mental 
vision, making Silence musical and peopling Solitude with 
swaying multitudes. 

It is Thought which formulates and beautifies ; for, "as a man 
thinketh, so is he," and " what we are is the result of what we 
have thought." 

The problem of life is an unfathomable mystery if considered 
on a materialistic basis, and plunges all who so reason into the 
depths of despair and sorrow ; but the Beautiful Builders— 
Love and Truth— places the earth-weary on sure foundations 
where the beggarly elements of inhannony cannot reach. 

The little book presented to your notice may be but segments 
of a circle of thought, fragmentary and disconnected, even as 
are the brick and mortar, wood and stone, which go into the up- 
building of a palace or warehouse ; but all may go toward the 
formation of an harmonious whole, if based on the Christ-method 
of teaching, action, and demonstration. 



BEAUTIFUL, BUILDERS, elegantly bound, contaiu- 
ing 130 pages, Avill be sent to any address, postage 
pakl, on the receipt of one dollar. Special tenus 
to dealers and agents. 

Address ^ _^ 

Mrs. ELDRIDGE J. SMITH, 

1736 F Street, Washington, D. C. 



6^ 

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